Chapter Three

I stayed at the guest house, tucked at the far edge of pack land where the torches burned dimmer and the halls stayed quiet. Invisible. That was exactly what he wanted, wasn't it. The Luna who existed only in name, who signed no ledgers and gave no orders, who could be folded away into a small stone building and forgotten until someone needed a reminder that she still technically belonged to him.

"He has no right," Nessa said, tugging the comb through my hair harder than she needed to.

She was the only maid who had followed me out here without being asked, the same one who had braided my hair before my bonding ceremony three years ago, back when I still believed the man I was marrying would never let anyone speak over me. I could see the anger sitting behind her eyes even now, tightly controlled, the kind of anger a servant learns to keep folded small so it doesn't cost her anything.

"Don't worry," I told her, watching my own reflection in the small cracked mirror propped against the wall. "One day, all of this ends."

She wanted to say something else. I could see it building behind her teeth, some argument about how I should march back into that hall and demand what was mine, how I shouldn't have let them push me out here without a fight. Instead she swallowed it down and said, "Yes, Luna," because that was what three years of service had trained her to say, even when her hands were shaking around the comb.

The garden was the only place in this entire compound that still felt like mine.

I had planted it myself the first spring after my bonding, on my knees in the dirt with soil under my nails while the other Lunas watched from a distance and whispered about how strange it was for a Luna to garden like a servant. I hadn't cared then. I didn't care now. Every rosebush, every trailing vine along the low stone wall, I had grown with my own hands during the only years of my life when I still believed I had a future here worth building.

I was standing among the roses when Lyra's voice cut through the quiet.

"We need to uproot this bush," she said, strolling in like she owned the ground beneath her feet, "and replace it with something more beautiful. Hibiscus, maybe. Something that actually blooms."

Nessa's head snapped toward her, then toward me, waiting to see how I would answer. I straightened my spine, pulling together whatever aura I had left after everything the last two days had stripped from me.

"You can't uproot it," I said.

Lyra smiled, slow and delighted, like I had just given her exactly the reaction she'd been hoping for.

"This is the Luna's garden," Nessa said quickly, stepping half in front of me, and I loved her fiercely in that moment for the courage it took.

Lyra laughed, and it was not a kind sound. "Oh, Elena." Not Luna. Just my name, bare, stripped of every title I had carried into this pack. "Don't you know I'm carrying the Alpha's heir? Do you really think there's anything here you can stop me from doing?"

I wanted to fight her. Every instinct in me was screaming to remind her exactly who my father was, to let the truth spill out right there in the dirt between the roses and watch the color drain from her smug face. I forced myself to breathe instead, forced the words back down, because the moment wasn't right yet and I refused to waste it on her.

That was when I heard him coming.

Marcus crossed the garden at a near-run, drawn by the sound of her voice the way he never once came running for mine. "What's wrong?" he asked her, ignoring me entirely, like I was a piece of the scenery.

"I want to uproot this bush," Lyra said, pouting now, pressing a hand to her stomach like the mere sight of an old rosebush had caused her genuine distress, "and plant something more beautiful in its place."

He turned to the maids. "Uproot it."

"No." The word tore out of me before I could soften it. "You can't uproot it. This is the only thing I have left."

He looked at me then, and there was nothing gentle in it. "I'm doing this for the pack, Elena. To keep everyone happy."

"You're uprooting my garden," I said, "and calling it peace?"

"Do you know what she's carrying?" His voice rose, sharp enough that a few wolves passing beyond the garden wall slowed their steps to listen. "Do you understand the value of what she's giving this pack? And you're standing here arguing with me over flowers."

My throat closed around everything I wanted to say back to him. Tears gathered hot behind my eyes, and I hated myself for how close they came to falling in front of her.

He turned from me and gave the order again, and this time the maids obeyed. I watched Nessa's hands shake as she was forced to help, watched shovels bite into soil I had turned myself, root by root, three years of quiet mornings undone in the space of a single afternoon. Marcus didn't stay to watch it finish. He walked off with Lyra tucked against his side, already discussing what color the hibiscus should be.

It was the last rosebush, the one nearest the wall, the one I had planted the same week I first realized I might actually love him, that finally broke something loose in my chest. I watched its roots tear free of the earth, pale and exposed in the afternoon light, and something in me that had been holding on for three years simply let go.

I didn't cry. I didn't scream. I stood very still among the ruined beds and understood, with a clarity that felt almost peaceful, that there was nothing left here for me to protect.