LOGINFour: Forgive Me
EIRA
Cassian rises as I walk in. And everyone does too.
Eyes stare at me, the Beta and the royal Omegas who will serve as witnesses to our joining. The elders stand at the back of Cassian who is flanked by Alpha Eric and Lysandra.
Their eyes follow me, and I shrink into myself but keep my head high. My shoes click against the tiled floors.
Maybe if I portray confidence, Cassian would see that I can be Luna. That I can serve at his side like a Queen.
“Her hair is white?” Someone murmurs. And my heart falls. I hope the color of my hair won’t be a problem.
My breathing shallows as I walk down the long aisle toward Cassian. His familiar scent hits me, my wolf whines. And my lungs expand to greedily inhale him.
“Your majesty.” I bow, baring my neck in submission.
Cassian’s eyes darken, and his fists clench. His body is tense, coiled tight. And his eyes, they flash.
“Eira!” He acknowledges, and steps back. My eyes scan the elders, Alpha Eric and they stop at Lysandra.
Lysandra Orion. I’ve never seen her, but the rumors are false. She isn’t ugly. In fact, she’s the opposite. A blonde bombshell, stunning.
She gives me a blank stare when she catches my eyes, and I look away, embarrassed at being caught.
“You may all sit!” Cassian states, and everyone sits. Being the only one —asides Cassian—standing, I feel exposed, self-conscious. Nervous.
“As you all heard, I found my mate.” Hums of agreement follow. “You may or may not know who she is, so today I present to you…”
Cassian signifies with his eyes that I should face the pack. And I obey.
“Eira Quinn!” He announces. “An Omega by birth, and by right!”
“An Omega?” Someone scoffs. And then, an uproar ensues. The disapproval is evident in their faces, in the words they speak. They don’t accept me. They don’t even give me a chance.
But when Cassian accepts me, and declares me his Luna, they will have to live with it. And so I let their words roll off my back.
My smile is tight, and my heart races as I wait for the announcement. The declaration.
“Silence!” Cassian’s voice booms and the room becomes quiet. Quickly.
“Today, I call you here to witness the rejection of Eira Quinn as my mate. In the presence of the elders, and the representatives of the moon goddess.”
Loud gasps fill the silence. My smile fades and I turn quickly. My heart picks up in my chest, and nausea twists my intestines.
What? What is happening?
“I don’t understand, Your Majesty.” My voice is barely a whisper but he catches it. His jaw ticks and he glares.
I recoil from the intensity of his glare. And my heart breaks as I realize what is about to happen. The humiliation I’m about to face. My wolf whimpers.
“Please,” I beg in a whisper. “Don’t do this. Please.”
A flash of something zips through his eyes. Almost like reluctance. Anguish. But it passes before I can name it. His fists clench at his sides.
“An Omega cannot rule beside an Alpha King. Therefore, I, Alpha Cassian Vael…” Tears spring to my eyes and I brace myself for the rejection.
“..reject you, Eira Quinn, as my mate.”
The impact shoves me backwards and I stagger. Pain spreads across my chest, my stomach. Heat licks at my skin.
I scream. A blood-curdling scream. High-pitched. Piercing. Tears roll down my cheeks and I crumple to the ground, clawing at my heart.
My wolf howls. It’s gut-wrenching. It’s broken. Just like me.
I look up to find Cassian sitting on his throne. A hand rubs against his chest. He looks tired, worn out… almost older than he was a few seconds ago.
His eyes flash when they meet mine, and the pain I see is raw. But it doesn’t last long.
“Forgive me,” he mouths and looks away.
And I wonder why.
Why do this to us?
I wore a black dress today. Maybe something in me had a feeling this would happen.
And so I mourn.
I mourn a love I never got to experience, and a loss of something I had for only a moment.
“Jafeth,” Cassian calls. His Beta appears at his side. “Take her to the pack house.”
Jafeth nods, and he’s at my side in a minute. His hands are cold when they touch my heated skin, and I whimper, shivering.
He holds me up, and drags me away.
“I can’t imagine the pain she’s in.”
“Did she really think she could rule with His Majesty?”
“I wish that never happens to me.”
The words sear into my brain. Humiliation, shame, mortification… they cling to me like a second skin.
Sweat breaks out on my skin and my stomach rolls. It tumbles, twisting and turning. Bile quickly rises to my throat, and I swallow it down.
Wrong decision to make. Before I can think, it rushes up my throat again, and I hunch over.
Right there, in the middle of the aisle, I empty my guts. I puke. A whitish transparent liquid. My throat feels raw, hot.
“Gross,” someone grimaces.
Jafeth looks away, jaw clenched. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.”
Black dots dance in my vision, my head swims. I feel light-headed. Just before I succumb to the darkness that pulls me, I hear it…
“White hair. A gene of the moonblood line. Cursed. Prophecies surround them.”
It’s a whisper in a foreign language. But somehow, I understand it.
“The rest of them were killed. She’s the last of their kind, she must be killed.”
And I succumb to the blackness. I don’t struggle, no, I go willingly. But just before my mind blanks, I make up my mind.
When I wake up, I will leave Ashbane pack. I will run, and I will hide.
I will survive.
THE ENDING HAPPINESS CASSIAN'S POVThe northern delegation arrives in the afternoon.There are seven of them. Pack leaders and advisors, traveling together, which in itself is a thing that would not have happened four months ago. The northern territories have been in contest for decades, border disputes, resource arguments, the long-running grievances of packs who have been circling each other so long they've forgotten the original reasons and are fighting purely from habit.They sit on one side of the long table in the eastern meeting room.Eira sits across from them.I am here.But I am not leading this.I decided that three weeks ago when we mapped out the delegation schedule together and she looked at the northern meeting and said nothing, just looked, and I watched her decide something privately before moving to the next item on the list. I decided it then. Confirmed it this morning when I told her I would be present and she looked at me with the particular expression she
WHAT WE ARE NOWEIRA'S POVThree months later, the palace feels different.I noticed it in small ways first.The way the staff move through the corridors, not the careful, eyes-down efficiency of people navigating a space that belongs to someone else, but the looser, more present movement of people who have decided the space belongs to them too. The way conversations happen in rooms that used to be silent. The way the great hall, which always felt like a held breath, feels like an exhale now.The way people look at me when I walk through it.Not the sideways look. Not the calculating, categorizing look of people trying to determine what I am and what I represent and whether I am a threat or a resource or something to be managed. Just people looking at their Queen. Some of them still learning what that means. Some of them already decided.I am still learning what it means myself.Some mornings I wake up before Cassian and I lie in the grey pre-dawn quiet and I take inventory the
CHOSENEIRA'S POVThe hall eventually empties.It takes a long time. There are pack leaders to receive and elders to speak with and the specific social architecture of a gathering like this that requires presence and attention and the patient management of relationships, some of which are new and need to be built and some of which are old and need to be rebuilt and some of which are damaged in ways that are going to take years and honesty and work.I do all of it.I do it differently than I used to.When the evening finally thins and the torches have burned lower and the last of the formal conversations have been concluded and the hall has been left to the servants and the quiet, I find myself standing at the tall window at the far end.The night outside is clear.The moon is full.Cassian finds me there.I hear him coming. I have always heard him coming, something in the way he occupies space, the specific quality of attention he generates in a room, the way the air knows he
FORMALITY CASSIAN'S POVShe walks toward me and I forget every word I prepared.I prepared words. I spent the better part of the morning on them, the formal declarations, the ceremonial language, the specific phrasing that pack law requires for a confirmation of this kind. I know them. I could say them in my sleep. I have been saying formal words in formal halls my entire life and I have never once forgotten them in the moment.I have forgotten all of them.Not because of the dress, though the dress isNot because of that.Because of the way she is walking.I have been watching Eira move through this palace for months. I know the way she carries herself. I know the specific quality of her posture and the particular management of her expression and the careful way she occupies spaces that she was never entirely sure she was allowed to occupy.She is not moving like that.She is moving like someone who has come home to something that was always hers and is simply walking throu
CHOSENEIRA'S POVThey told me to wear white.The palace attendants came to the room in the early afternoon, three of them, carrying things in their arms with the careful reverence of people transporting objects that matter. They laid everything out on the table by the window without speaking and then stood back and looked at me with expressions that were trying very hard to be neutral and not quite managing it.The dress is white.Not the white of absence or surrender or the blank page before anything has been written on it. The white of the Moonblood. Of my wolf, standing silver in a clearing full of wolves who thought they knew what I was. The white of something that has always been there and is only now being allowed to be seen.I stood in front of it for a long time.One of the attendants — young, dark-haired, the one who always moves slightly faster than the others, cleared her throat softly and said, "There's no rush, my lady."My lady.She said it like she meant it.L
WHEN SHE WAKESCassian POVI sit back in the chair and I listen to the silence and I watch Eira breathe.She wakes just before dawn.I know the moment before she opens her eyes because her breathing changes. Deepens. The particular shift from the deep involuntary rhythm of genuine unconsciousness to the lighter rhythm of someone who is coming back to themselves. I've been listening to her breathe for six hours and I know the difference.I sit forward.Her eyes open.Slowly. Then more, as the light registers and she makes sense of it. The ceiling first. Then the room. Then Kael, still asleep across her feet, his hair disordered and one arm dangling off the edge of the mattress in the specific boneless abandon of deep sleep.Her face does something complicated and private at the sight of him.Her hand moves, slowly, and comes to rest on his ankle.The lightest touch.Just to feel him there.Then she turns her head and she sees me.We look at each other.Neither of us speaks.
Fifty-nine: Dream Or Reality?TRIGGER WARNING —PROCEED WITH CAUTION‼️CASSIANI don’t know when the celebration ends or if it even ends. All I know is that Reece and Lysandra are helping me to my room.Everything is blurry, my mind swimming. And for the first time in a while it’s not about Eira, or
Fifty-five: The ProposalEIRAThe moment I burst out of the arena, I can finally breathe.My lungs expand, taking in much needed air. Tears prick the back of my eyes but I blink them away.Goddess, it hurts.The mark on my neck, the severed bond in my chest, even my new found wolf whines at the bac
Fifty-Four: The King And His QueenCASSIANI haven’t seen Eira since yesterday afternoon.It shouldn't surprise me, actually. Since our return, she’s been avoiding me in every way. All I needed was to warn her about the coronation that is about to happen.To tell her that it doesn’t mean anything.
EIRAI follow the Omega, my heart in my throat.“What happened to him?” I ask, frantic.“I can’t explain it, you need to see for yourself.”Oh goddess, that response only churns my stomach further. A thick lump settles in my throat.When we round the last corner of the palace, I’m suddenly shoved t







