Chapter Two

Irabella~

I told myself I wouldn't look.

I sat on the edge of my bed with my hands pressed between my knees and stared at the wall. There was a crack in the paint near the corner that ran up toward the ceiling. I had traced it with my eyes a thousand times. I traced it again.

Nobody had knocked on my door all morning except my mother, once, to tell me to stay inside and keep quiet. She hadn't opened it. She had said it to the wood and walked away. I heard her heels on the hallway floor going back down, quick and light.

Tires crunched on the gravel outside. Doors shut, one, two, three. A man cleared his throat, and my father's voice answered, too warm.

Downstairs, the front door opened. My mother's laugh came up through the floor, the one she kept for company. Then my father's voice, loud and proud.

Then another voice. Low. Even.

My wolf lifted her head.

"No," I said under my breath. "Stay down."

She didn't. She pushed against my ribs until I was on my feet, and I couldn't have told anyone when I decided to stand. I crossed the room. My hand was on the doorknob. I turned it and pulled the door open an inch, then two.

One look. That was all I wanted. See him once, then go back and sit down.

I went down the hall in my socks, close to the wall, and stopped at the top of the staircase where the railing hid most of me. The marble in the foyer was polished so hard it threw the chandelier back up at the ceiling. My parents stood near the door in the clothes they saved for the pack's biggest days. My father wore a new tie. My mother had done her hair twice. I could tell because one side was still a little damp.

Isabella waited on the bottom step in my dress. My veil. She stood the way she must have practiced in the mirror, chin up, hands folded.

The door swung wide and he walked in.

The bond hit me all at once. My knees went and I caught the railing with both hands. The wood creaked under my grip. Heat poured through my chest and down my arms until my skin felt two sizes too small. My wolf wasn't a voice at the back of my head anymore. She was right at the front, loud and certain.

Mate. Mate. Go to him.

He was tall. Wide through the shoulders, dark hair cut short, a black coat that hung open. He didn't raise his voice or move fast, and the room still bent toward him. My father straightened up. My mother's laugh cut off halfway.

Alpha.

Mine.

My chest hurt so badly I pressed my palm flat against it. Every part of me wanted to run down those stairs. I felt my weight shift onto my front foot. I held the railing harder.

My mouth had gone dry. I swallowed and it didn't help. My fingertips tingled like I'd slept on them, and I could smell him from where I stood, pine and cold air and something warm underneath it that made my eyes sting.

His head turned.

He looked up the staircase and his eyes found mine.

I stopped breathing. I couldn't hear my parents anymore. All I could hear was my own heartbeat, fast and hard in my ears.

His eyes were dark, and they didn't leave me. He didn't blink. For one second I thought he knew. I thought he felt it too and was about to say my name, even though he had never heard it.

His eyebrows pulled together. His nostrils flared, once, barely, like he was reaching for a scent and coming up empty. He tilted his head.

He frowned.

I wanted to shout it down to him. I'm here. It's me. My mouth stayed shut and my throat locked around the words.

Footsteps on the stairs.

My parents had stepped toward him and started talking about the drive, the weather, anything to keep him facing them. Isabella had slipped away from the bottom step. She climbed with her eyes on me, one step at a time. She was smiling. It was wide and pleased, and when she reached the landing, with her back to the foyer, the smile fell off her face like she'd dropped it.

"Why are you standing there?" Her voice carried down to the foyer. Sweet. Worried. "Come here, Ira. Come meet the Alpha."

She came closer. Her mouth twisted.

"We told you not to come out," she said, low and fast. "And you came out anyway. Do you want to ruin this for me? Do you think you can take this from me?"

"He's my mate," I whispered.

"He's mine." Her eyes flashed. "I was born to be a Luna. The Moon Goddess made a mistake when she picked you. You're weak. You're nothing. You don't deserve him."

"Isabella—"

"Let me tell you something." She stepped in so close her breath touched my cheek. "He will never be yours. I'll make sure of it."

She took my wrist.

Her grip was tight enough to hurt. I looked at her hand, then at her face, and I watched her make up her mind.

She threw herself backward off the top step.

The scream filled the house. Her body hit the stairs and every step made a sound I felt in my teeth. She landed at the bottom with one arm folded under her and didn't move.

"IRA PUSHED ME!"

No.

No, no, no, no.

"WHAT?" My father's roar shook the glass in the front windows.

I looked down at my hand. My arm was still stretched out in front of me, fingers open, right where she'd pulled it. From below it would look like I had shoved her.

My mother was already on her knees on the marble with Isabella's head in her lap. "Baby, can you hear me? Can you move?"

Isabella sobbed. Real tears ran down her face. "She pushed me. I only wanted her to come down and meet him, and she got so angry, she—"

"I didn't," I said. It came out quiet.

Nobody turned.

"LIAR!" My father was at the foot of the stairs now, then halfway up them, his face dark red. "We heard her scream! We saw you standing right there!"

"She grabbed my wrist and threw herself—"

"She's bleeding," my mother said.

I looked.

Blood ran from Isabella's temple down into her hair. Her left arm lay at an angle an arm should not lie at. She had hurt herself. Really hurt herself, enough that the sound of it was still in my ears.

To frame me.

The Alpha crouched beside her. His hands were careful on her arm, on her head, checking her over. His face stayed hard and flat. But when his fingers touched her skin, something crossed his face and was gone. A pause. A small frown. The look of a man who had heard a sound in the next room and couldn't place it.

Her eyes slid to me for half a second, bright and dry under the tears. Then they closed again, and she let out a small, pitiful breath.

"Alpha Daemon." Isabella's voice was thin and shaky. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gone to her. I knew she was upset about... about us. I thought if she met you she would understand this is what the Moon Goddess wanted."

I didn't answer. What would I have said?

They had never believed me before. They weren't going to start with this.

The Alpha stood up.

He looked at me.

The pull came again, so strong my hands shook on the railing. His eyes narrowed. He looked at me the way you look at a word you know but can't remember the meaning of.

He took a step toward the stairs.

"Alpha." My mother's voice cracked. "Please. Isabella needs a doctor."

He stopped.

He looked back at Isabella, bleeding and crying on the floor. Then up at me again.

"Did you push her?"

He said it quietly. There was something under the words that I could have been imagining. I thought he wanted me to say no. I thought he needed me to.

"No," I said. My voice sounded like it came from another room. "I didn't touch her."

"She's BLEEDING!" my mother screamed.

His jaw tightened.

He kept looking at me. The bond tugged in my chest, steady and aching, and I stood there and let him look. I didn't beg. I didn't explain. Explaining had never once worked in this house.

"Get her out of my sight," he said.

My heart dropped.

"Guards!"

Two men came in from outside. Big. Armed.

"Take her to the border," the Alpha said. "She is exiled from pack lands for five years. If she comes back before then, she will be executed."

Five years.

I would be twenty-three.

If I lived that long.

"You can't—" my father began.

"This is my decision." The Alpha cut him off without raising his voice. "She attacked my mate. She is lucky I'm being merciful."

His face changed on the last word. A small flinch, like the word had a bad taste. His hand came up and pressed against his chest, just for a second, and his brow creased as though something there was bothering him.

Then Isabella whimpered.

And whatever he had been feeling went out of his face.

The guards took my arms. I didn't fight them. There was nothing left to fight for.

They walked me toward the door. At the last moment I turned my head.

The Alpha had Isabella up on her feet, one arm around her waist. Her head rested on his shoulder.

She looked at me over it.

And smiled.

I turned away.

The guards pushed me out onto the porch and the door shut behind me. One of them stayed close.

"You have until sunrise to pack and leave," he said. "After that, we drag you out."

I nodded.

I walked back up to my room alone. The hallway was exactly as I had left it, and my door was still open two inches.

Downstairs, someone had started mopping. I could hear the wet slap of it on the marble, and my mother's voice telling a maid to be careful with Isabella's blood on the rug.

I took the duffel bag from under my bed. I put in two shirts, a pair of jeans, my other pair of socks. I held the photo of my grandmother for a while and then put that in too. It didn't take long. Everything I owned fit with room left over.

I zipped the bag and stood there with the strap in my fist. My wolf was pacing inside me, back and forth, back and forth, whining low. She wanted the door. She wanted the stairs. She wanted him, and she didn't understand why we were packing instead.

"I know," I told her. My voice cracked on it. "I know."

She kept pacing.

Through the window the sky was still black. Sunrise was hours away. They had given me the whole night, and I had nothing left to do with it.

I put the bag by the door. I checked the drawers, even though I knew they were empty. I smoothed the blanket on the bed, and then I stood looking at what I had just done, because there was no reason on earth to make that bed.

Five years.

Five years of exile for something I didn't do.

Five years away from my mate.

My mate would spend those years with my sister. He would believe what she told him. He would learn to love her.

I sat down on my bed.

I didn't cry.

Crying didn't help me. Not once in that house. I had learned that a long time ago.