CHAPTER 3: Dinner from Hell

 "To what do we owe this gathering, son?"

Alpha Thornwell's voice fills the dining room like a thunderclap. Deep and commanding, the kind of voice that expects silence to follow it. The kind that gets it.

Twenty chairs around the table. I've never felt smaller.

I sit near the far end, my hands folded in my lap where no one can see them shaking. The chandelier overhead throws warm gold light across polished mahogany and gleaming silverware. Everything looks expensive. Curated. Perfect.

I don't belong here. I've never belonged here. Three years of sitting at this table and I still feel like someone's going to realize the mistake and escort me out.

Damon sits near his father at the head. Not beside me. Never beside me at these gatherings. I am placed near the end with the lesser pack members, the ones who are invited out of obligation rather than importance.

Alpha Thornwell is a wall of a man. Silver-haired, sharp-eyed, the kind of wolf who has never once doubted his own authority. He built Silverpine Pack into what it is through iron will and the firm belief that weakness has no place in a pack. He made no secret of what he thought of his son's choice of mate.

Omega. He says the word the way other people say mistake.

Beta Rowan sits to the Alpha's right. Broad-shouldered, sandy-haired, always professional. He's been kind to me in a distant sort of way. Not cruel, just indifferent. I don't exist in his world unless Damon needs something.

Gamma Clark is across from him. Older, weathered, the kind of wolf who has seen everything and reacts to nothing.

Octavia sits near the middle of the table. Damon's other half-sister. She's quieter than Clarissa, darker in coloring, easier to overlook. She keeps to herself mostly. Tonight her hands are folded in her lap, her posture perfectly straight. When our eyes meet for a brief moment, something moves across her face. Something complicated and quick that disappears before I can read it. She looks away first.

I'm wearing the dress Damon set out for me this morning. Beige. High-necked. Long sleeves despite the warmth of the room. It hangs loose and shapeless, swallowing my frame. He chose it, he said, because it was appropriate for a Luna at a formal dinner.

It makes me invisible. Which I suspect is the point.

Clarissa sweeps in three minutes late. The room shifts when she enters. Heads turn. Conversations pause. She's wearing red, a deep rich red that catches every light in the room. The dress fits like it was made for her body specifically. Her blonde hair is down, falling in waves over her shoulders. She smells like expensive perfume and something warmer underneath.

She takes the seat beside Damon.

Not me. Her.

Damon pulls her chair out for her. He doesn't look up when I came in tonight.

The staff bring out the first course. Soup, rich and fragrant, with crusty bread on the side. The smell turns my stomach. I pick up my spoon and set it down again.

Alpha Thornwell surveys his table like a king reviewing his court. His gaze moves from face to face, taking inventory.

"To what do we owe this gathering, son?"

Damon rises from his chair. Straightens his jacket. His hand moves to Clarissa's shoulder and rests there. Casual. Comfortable. Practiced.

"Clarissa is pregnant."

The room erupts.

It happens so fast it's disorienting. Chairs scraping back, voices rising over each other, the sound of congratulations crashing together like waves. Beta Rowan stands and grabs Damon's hand, pumping it hard. Gamma Clark raises his glass before anyone calls a toast. Pack members lean across the table toward Clarissa, who receives the attention with a glowing, tearful smile.

I watch it all like I'm on the other side of glass.

Each word of congratulation hits me somewhere behind my sternum. A soft, repeated impact. Like being poked in a bruise over and over.

"Finally!" Alpha Thornwell's fist comes down on the table hard enough to rattle the silverware. Pure satisfaction on his face. Pride. The real kind, unguarded and bright. "An heir! Well done, boy."

Damon accepts the praise with a nod. He doesn't correct anyone. Doesn't clarify who the father is or what the situation actually means. Just lets the assumption settle over the room like a comfortable blanket.

They all think it's straightforward. They all think they know what this is.

And they're right, I realize. They do know. This was never a secret that needed keeping. I was the only one who didn't understand what was happening under my own roof.

My hand finds my pocket. The test is still there. Hard plastic edges digging into my fingers through the fabric of this awful dress.

Across the table, Clarissa laughs at something Rowan says. She covers her mouth with her hand, delighted and modest all at once. Her other hand rests on her stomach. Already. The baby is barely real yet and she already holds herself like a mother.

I press my fingers harder against the test in my pocket.

"A toast!" someone calls.

Glasses rise around the table. I lift mine because not lifting it would be noticed. The water is cold and tasteless in my mouth.

Alpha Thornwell's gaze sweeps the length of the table. It moves past faces, past glasses raised in celebration, and lands on me like a hammer finding a nail.

My stomach drops.

"And what about you, girl?"

The celebration stutters. Forks stop halfway to mouths. Conversations die mid-sentence. Twenty pairs of eyes swing toward me with the slow, inevitable weight of a tide turning.

"Three years mated." Alpha Thornwell's voice carries the mild curiosity of someone who has never been embarrassed in their life and cannot imagine the feeling. "Where's MY grandchild from the Luna?"

The silence that follows is the loudest thing I've ever heard.

My mouth opens. Closes. The words I practiced this morning, in the mirror, with my hands shaking around a pregnancy test, have completely disappeared.

Damon's jaw tightens. I see it from the corner of my eye. The muscle jumping in his cheek. But his eyes stay on his plate.

Not on me.

Never on me.

"I..." My voice comes out barely above a whisper. "I'm..."

"Oh, don't pressure her, Alpha." Clarissa's voice cuts in, smooth and warm as honey poured over something sharp. She tilts her head in my direction, her expression soft with false sympathy. "Some wolves just aren't... built for motherhood."

The words land gentle as a feather and cut like a blade.

Nervous laughter ripples around the table. Some of it sounds uncertain. Some of it sounds genuine.

My hand presses hard against the pocket where the test sits. I could end this right now. Pull it out. Show them the two pink lines and watch Clarissa's soft smile fracture.

But my fingers won't move.

Because even if I showed them, nothing would change. This table, these people, this pack. They made their choice the moment they started celebrating without looking at me.

"An omega Luna." Alpha Thornwell shakes his head. He says it the way you'd say a structural flaw in a building. A problem that should have been caught before construction was finished. "I told you it wouldn't work, Damon."

"Father." Damon's voice is flat. No heat behind it. No defense.

Just the single word, spoken to get his father to stop. Not because he disagrees.

"Weak bloodlines produce weak pups." The Alpha reaches for his wine glass. Calm. Authoritative. The verdict of a man who has never been wrong about anything. "If she can produce at all."

The laughter that follows is louder than before.

I stare at the pattern on my plate. Blue flowers around the white rim. Small and delicate and easy to overlook.

My eyes are burning. I press the feeling down, hard. I will not cry at this table. I have never cried at this table and I won't start tonight.

I look at Damon. Find his face through sheer force of will, begging him silently to say something. To look at me. To acknowledge that I'm sitting ten feet away while his father and his pack laugh at my expense.

He picks up his wine glass and takes a slow sip.

He never defends me. Not once in three years.

The main course arrives. Roasted meat and vegetables that smell wonderful and might as well be cardboard. Conversation flows back into the spaces around pack business and territory and things that don't involve me. I push food around my plate and count the flowers on the china.

Seven on this side. Eight on the other.

"Excuse me." I set my napkin on the table and begin to push back my chair.

Damon's hand shoots out.

His fingers wrap around my wrist. The bruised one. The pressure is immediate and precise, landing exactly on the place that already aches.

Pain sparks up my arm, sharp and bright.

"Sit down." His voice is low. Controlled. Not loud enough for anyone else to hear. "Don't be rude."

Our eyes meet. His are flat and cold and completely certain.

I sit.

His grip stays tight. Three seconds. Four. Five. He holds on until the tension leaves my body. Until I stop pulling. Until I submit.

Then he releases me and turns back to Beta Rowan like nothing happened.

I fold my hands in my lap. Press my wrist against my thigh to muffle the throbbing.

Dessert comes. Rich chocolate cake with dark ganache and a dusting of gold powder on top. It looks beautiful.

In my mouth it tastes like sawdust.

Across the table, Clarissa glows. She laughs at the right moments, listens at the right moments, touches Damon's arm when she wants to emphasize a point. People orbit her naturally, pulled in by something warm and magnetic that I have never possessed.

She catches me watching. Her smile doesn't waver. But her eyes sharpen into something that has nothing to do with warmth.

Under the table, hidden from everyone, I press my palm flat against my stomach.

Against my secret. Against the life growing there that no one at this table knows about. The baby Damon has already told me to erase.

My jaw tightens.

You will never feel this small.

I make the promise in the silence behind my ribs, where no one can hear it.

And I mean every word.