01: A throne without an heir

Selene’s POV

The healer’s chamber smelled of chamomile and the faInt Iron tang of tInctures. Sunlight slanted through narrow shutters and fell across the rough-hewn bench Where 1 perched, fIngers worrying the strap of my satchel until the leather creaked. Beneath my palms my pulse thrummed like a trapped animal.

Year four.

Four long cycles. Four seasons of heat and hollow hope. Of skipping a season and clinging to test strips like talismans. Of praying beneath the pale face of the Moon for an answer that would not come.

Each time the mark was blank.

It had stopped being merely sorrow. It gnawed. It hollowed me from the inside out.

My bond. My place. My pride.

Darren had grown distant from me. As if each failed attempt to bear his heir pulled him one step further from our bond. We were still bound by the Moon, but the word “mate” had become more title than truth.

The door sighed open and the healer stepped in, file tucked under his arm. He wore the linen coat all the pack physicians wore when they wanted to look official; his expression, however, betrayed him, lined with the kind of sympathy that arrives before bad ordinary news.

“Selene,” he said, careful as a man stepping over a sleeping hound. “I’m sorry to delay you.”

I managed a tight nod. Hope is a small, foolish thing; you never quite learn how to hold it steady when everything else threatens to knock it loose.

He unfolded the papers. “You should rest,” he said gently. “We can continue to try. I’ll be honest, I did not expect you here this cycle. You and the Alpha had seemed to agree on pausing.”

My throat closed. “I missed my heat,” I said. “Three weeks. I thought… maybe hormones. Then I thought I should be sure.”

He lifted a brow. “Very well. We’ll take blood. The apothecary’s assistant is not in today; we’ll have results by the morrow.”

Tomorrow. One more whole night to pace the floor in a palace that listened and judged and kept its opinions behind heavy curtains.

The needle pricked my arm and I felt nothing more than a small, practiced annoyance. After years of vials and tests, needles had become routine a mechanical surrender that required no bravery.

Darren hadn’t come with me. He had stopped coming long ago: first one missed appointment, then another, then a steady absence that became explanation enough. Once he argued, once he made plans with me. Now he ruled his nights and left me to mine.

I left the healer’s chamber clutching a folded scrap of paper that felt lighter than it should. The wind in the corridor smelled of pines and the distant smoke of torches. When I crossed the threshold into the servant wing, Diana was waiting exactly where she always waited — as predictable as the tide, as faithful.

“How did it go?” she asked, slipping my cloak off and guiding me toward the bath with hands that knew their way around household rituals and grief alike.

“I’ll know tomorrow,” I replied, voice a set of brittle pebbles.

Her sigh was small but ancient. “Do you think he’ll be home tonight? His patrols have grown longer.”

I shrugged one shoulder. “I do not know what he does anymore beyond the Ridge.”

“It’s cruel,” she said.

“Don’t let it pull you under,” I told her, though my hands were trembling as she ran herbs into the steaming water. “You’re the one thing I have that answers when I call.”

Her smile was warm and fragile. “Always, Luna.”

She said the title like a benediction. It sounded heavy in my ears crown and duty stitched into a single syllable.

I was never quite alone. I had Diana, the chambermaids, the quiet loyalty of those bound to my household by service and coin. But loneliness had settled into my bones like winter. The manor glittered with trophies and banners, but every room could echo with the emptiness if the right note was struck.

That night Darren slipped back into our chamber like a shadow finding its place again. He did not announce himself; he closed the door and came to the bed with the easy entitlement of a man who had always been used to warmth on demand. His hands were hungry in a way the pack had once called desire; his mouth set in the practiced way of a lover who had long since learned how to give what was expected rather than what was felt.

I did not push him away. His touch was becoming rare and, for the sake of something like comfort, I took what little he offered. For a breath I remembered him as he had been: a younger man who laughed at festivals, who used to press small, reckless promises into my ear when we were young and believed in forever.

Afterwards I lay against him, listening to the rhythm of his chest a drum that once felt like home and now sounded like a place I no longer owned. His fingers raked through my hair; the motion was automatic, tender in the way of habit.

“I didn’t expect you this night,” I said softly.

He hummed, something between assent and evasion.

“What weighs you?” I asked, searching the face that had once been a map of tenderness.

He caught my hand. “I love you, Selene. I have always loved you,” he said, and the words landed like a petition sincere, or at least made to seem so. Yet the tone bore an edge of duty, practiced and smoothed.

“You know what I want most,” he continued, voice steady enough to be almost mechanical, “the pack needs an heir. You understand how the elders watch. This” he gestured, helpless and precise, “this emptiness in our line is troublesome.”

Ivana’s shadow lay across his meaning, the matriarch’s voice folded into every sentence he spoke. I thought of telling him of the healer’s test, the brief ember of hope I still guarded, but the confession lodged in my throat and did not fall.

“No one wants an Alpha without an heir,” he said plainly. The next words were sharper, honed on impatience. “The council whispers you are barren.”

The words hit with a sting. My palm flared where he had slapped it a sharp, living ache that echoed in the plastered walls.

How dare he.

How dare he brand me with a word forged from all our failed attempts. He knew the truth as well as I; his own seed had faltered, and we had been led to mixtures and potions in the hope of remedy. But the scars and shame were worn by me alone the pregnancies that failed, the rounds of tinctures, the nights of bleeding and quiet weeping.

He pulled me close. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, voice full of practiced consolation. “But we must be practical.”

“Practical?” I snapped, claws of indignation showing. “Say it plainly what are you asking? To present women at court? To call others forward to secure the line? Was all your sudden warmth tonight a bargaining stroke?”

He did not flinch. “It is not that simple. There will be gatherings. My brothers will sit in counsel, and I need the support of your father. Many think Arden is the more likely choice for succession; his birth gives him claim and many favor him.”

I kept my silence. Arden’s claim meant little to me personally; if fate had any mercy I would have borne a child to secure peace. But here, in our world, birthright bowed often to influence and whispering voices.

“Your father will be persuaded,” Darren went on. His answer was smooth, as if recited. “My mother has asked that you speak with him tomorrow. She believes he will sway the vote.”

Of course she had. Ivana’s fingers moved through our lives with the ease of a spider tending her web, and always my father had been one of the strings she pulled.

He said it then: “Whatever happens, Selene, your place as Luna will not be taken away. You won’t be replaced.”

I let out a breath that tasted like iron. “Why would that even be a concern?” I asked.

He looked away for a flicker of a moment that tiny slack in his composure that told me he was not being wholly honest.

“As Alpha, suitors may be put before you to… encourage an heir,” he said quietly. “Because of the… situation.”

I laughed then — a brittle sound with no mirth. “You mean our situation,” I corrected.

He did not deny it.

“So answer me plainly,” I said, tilting my chin. “Has someone been presented already? Was this what your sudden fervor meant? Is this what tonight was a bribe?”

His smile was hollow. “Listen carefully,” he warned. “If you betray me, you will lose what this marriage gave you. Do not make me test my patience.”

There it was: the threat wrapped thinly in affection.

I closed my mouth. Words would not change that he saw the crown above all. Love had thinned between us until only the outline remained.

When he slept, his breath even and heavy, I lay awake beneath the gilded beams and listened to the palace breathe around me. I had the title. I had the banners. I had the rituals. But no heir to place beneath my name.

And the silence pressed in, loud enough finally to name itself: the cruelest betrayal was not being taken from me by another, but being left by the one who had been promised to stand beside me.