Chapter Two: The Warning

The Queen Mother slowly looked back at Seraphina, her gaze lingering on the faded blue dress she had questioned only moments earlier. Out of every noble daughter, every princess and every Alpha heiress gathered inside the Moon Palace, the one person she had least expected her son to choose was the quiet commoner standing at the very end of the line.

Yet she was the only one he had looked at.

"As you wish," she replied at last.

Turning toward the attendants who were still frozen in place, she regained the calm authority expected of the Queen of the Moon Kingdom.

"Prepare the surrogate contract. Have a chamber arranged for the chosen candidate. The rest may leave the palace."

"Yes, Your Majesty." The attendants hurried to obey.

Ryker turned without another word. The royal guards immediately fell in behind him. Within moments, the great doors of the hall closed once more.

The silence lasted only a heartbeat. Then the room erupted.

"How is that possible?"

"He chose a commoner?"

"There must be some mistake."

"I don't believe it." Every eye inside the hall settled on Seraphina.

Some stared with disbelief. Others with jealousy.

Not one carried kindness. Before Seraphina could gather her thoughts, a figure stepped gracefully out of the crowd.

It was the golden-haired noblewoman who had spoken with such confidence before the selection began.She stopped directly before Seraphina. For a brief moment, neither of them spoke.

Then a gentle smile spread across the woman's face.

It was beautiful, but it was also the coldest smile Seraphina had ever seen.

"So..." she said softly.

"You're the one." Seraphina frowned.

"I don't understand."

"You don't have to." The noblewoman took another slow step forward, her expensive perfume filling the small space between them.

"I should congratulate you." Her smile widened.

"But somehow..."

"...I can't." Her eyes slowly travelled over Seraphina's simple dress before returning to her face.

"I spent years preparing for this day."

"I learned royal etiquette."

"I studied the customs of the Moon Palace."

"I believed I understood the Alpha King better than anyone." A quiet laugh escaped her lips.

"And then..."

"...he walked past every one of us." Her smile finally disappeared."

...for you."

The words settled heavily between them. After a long silence, she leaned closer until only Seraphina could hear her voice.

"Everyone here thinks you've just become the luckiest woman in the kingdom." Her expression softened into something that looked almost like pity.

"I almost envy the fact that you still know nothing." Seraphina's brows drew together.

"What do you mean?" The noblewoman stepped back, smoothing the front of her gown.

"You'll understand soon enough." She turned to leave, but after taking only a few steps, she stopped.

Without looking back, she spoke one final sentence.

"Just remember this, Seraphina Ashvale..."

"Not everyone chosen by the Moon Palace lives happily ever after." She walked away without another glance.

Seraphina stood rooted to the spot, watching the woman disappear into the crowd.

The words refused to fade. They circled back again and again, quieter each time but no less unsettling, like a stone dropped into still water long after the ripples should have died.

Not everyone chosen by the Moon Palace lives happily ever after.

Seraphina wasn't foolish enough to believe a stranger's warning out of spite. Jealousy could sharpen anyone's tongue, and she had given the noblewoman every reason to want her rattled. And yet something about the way the words had been spoken lingered differently than simple cruelty. There had been no triumph in that woman's voice. If anything, there had been something closer to pity, the kind reserved for someone who didn't yet understand what they had agreed to.

She became aware, slowly, that the noise around her hadn't stopped. It had only changed shape.

The other candidates were no longer looking at the doors the Alpha King had disappeared through. They were looking at her, murmuring behind gloved hands, exchanging glances that needed no translation. She had felt eyes like that before, on the days she'd walked into the village market wearing a dress patched twice over, but never so many at once, and never for a reason so strange.

A commoner, chosen over princesses.

Even she still couldn't quite believe it herself.

Her fingers found the bracelet at her wrist again, out of habit more than thought. The familiar unevenness of the braid grounded her the way it always did, a small, worn anchor in a room built entirely out of marble and gold.

Noah.

If he were here, he would have already forgotten every royal in the room and demanded to know whether the floors truly were made of real silver, or if the chandeliers were heavy enough to fall. He wouldn't have cared about crowns or contracts. He would have cared only that his sister was standing somewhere warm, somewhere safe, somewhere far from the fever that had kept him pinned to a narrow bed for the better part of a year.

That thought steadied her more than anything the Queen Mother or the noblewoman had said.

Whatever waited beyond those doors, whatever the contract demanded of her, she hadn't come to the Moon Palace chasing a crown. She had come for one reason only, and that reason hadn't changed because a stranger with cold eyes had decided to plant a seed of doubt in her chest.

Still, the warning didn't leave her. It settled somewhere quiet, tucked beside her fear the way a splinter settles beneath skin, small enough to ignore and sharp enough to remember.

A royal attendant appeared at her side before she could dwell on it any longer.

"Lady Seraphina." The woman's voice was polite, practiced, betraying nothing of the whispers still rippling through the hall. "If you'll follow me. Your chamber has been prepared."

Seraphina drew a breath and made herself nod.

One step, then another. The marble floor felt colder beneath her worn shoes than it had that morning, though nothing about the room had changed except everyone's opinion of her.As she was led toward the towering doors at the far end of the hall, she allowed herself one last glance behind her. The candidates had already begun to disperse, their voices lowering into private clusters, their eyes still following her with a mixture of disbelief and something closer to suspicion.

She didn't know what waited for her beyond those doors, in the chambers of a palace that had never been built with someone like her in mind.

But she knew what waited for her at home, and that was enough to keep walking.