Chapter 3: Rejected by the Alpha

The council hall was packed by dusk, every bench filled, warriors lining the walls three deep. Word of what had happened at the ceremony had spread through Ashwood faster than any messenger could have carried it, and half the pack seemed to have come just to see how it would end. I stood in the center of it all in the same dress I'd been arrested in, the scorched scrap of paper hidden in my palm because I hadn't found a single person all day willing to look at it before the trial began.

Damon sat on the Alpha's seat above the gathered elders, and I searched his face the moment I was brought in, desperate for some sign that the bond meant what I'd felt in that hall the night before. He looked wrecked. Sleepless. His eyes found mine and held there, and for one breath I let myself believe he was going to stop this before it started.

Elder Cole rose first. "Bring forward the evidence."

A warrior placed the leather pouch on the table before the council, the herbs and thread Vivienne claimed to have found under my mattress laid out like a confession that had already been written.

"I've never touched those," I said. "Someone put them there to be found."

"By whom?" Elder Cole asked, and the question hung in the air like a trap I'd already walked into.

I looked at Vivienne, seated beside her father in pale blue silk, dabbing at eyes that weren't actually crying. "By her."

Gasps rippled through the hall. Vivienne pressed a hand to her chest like I'd struck her. "I have done nothing but grieve the loss of the man I was promised to since I was twelve years old, and now I'm to be accused of witchcraft by the girl who stole him?"

"I have proof she planned this before the ceremony," I said, holding up the scorched paper with a hand I fought to keep steady. "A letter, burned two nights before the Moon Rite. A servant saved this piece from the hearth."

Elder Cole took it from me, turned it over once, and set it down without even reading it aloud. "A torn scrap with three illegible words is not proof of anything. It could belong to any correspondence. Wedding preparations require a hundred letters."

"Read it," I said. "Let the council ear it."

"The council has seen quite enough forged evidence for one trial." His voice had gone hard as stone. "Bring the servant who claims to have given this to you."

I turned to gesture toward the door, already knowing what I would find before I found it. Empty. No one came forward. I hadn't gotten her name. In my panic I hadn't asked, and now there was no one in that hall to confirm a word I'd said.

"There's no witness," Elder Cole announced, "because there is no witness. Only a story."

Vivienne rose slowly, and when she spoke her voice was gentle, almost pitying, which made it land far worse than anger would have. "I don't hate you for this. Truly. Whatever hold Crimson Hollow's magic has on you, I don't believe you chose it. But this pack cannot survive with an unknown spy sitting where its Luna should stand."

I looked at Damon. He hadn't spoken once since I'd been brought in, and the longer his silence stretched the colder the room around me seemed to get.

"Damon." His name came out smaller than I meant it to. "You know what you felt. You know it was real."

He stood slowly, and for a moment I thought he was going to walk down from that seat and put himself between me and the whole hall. Instead he looked at the pouch on the table, at the scrap of burned paper no one had bothered to read, at his own council staring up at him waiting for a verdict he clearly hadn't wanted to reach.

"I felt something," he said quietly. "I won't deny that. But a bond I can't verify against evidence I can't ignore isn't enough to risk this entire pack on."

"Then ask someone to actually read the letter," I said, my voice cracking now despite everything I did to hold it steady. "Ask someone to find the girl who gave it to me. Don't decide this on a pouch that appeared under my mattress the same night I collapsed in front of three hundred witnesses."

"I have to think of Ashwood first." He wouldn't look at me directly anymore, which told me everything the words hadn't. "I, Damon Ashwood, Alpha of this pack, rejects the mate bond placed upon me this night, and release the girl known as Sera from any claim on this territory."

The hall went utterly silent, and then it didn't, elders murmuring their approval, Vivienne's shoulders sagging in visible, theatrical relief.

I felt the bond tear. Not fade, not weaken. Tear, like something physically ripping loose from behind my ribs, a pain so total that for a moment the entire hall went white at the edges of my vision, and I dropped to my knees on the stone floor with a sound I didn't recognize as my own voice.

No one moved to help me up. Not one of the servants I had worked beside for months, not one of the elders who had eaten food I'd cooked, not the Alpha whose rejection had just put me on the floor in front of everyone I had ever known here. Guards were already moving to escort me out, hands closing hard around my arms, and Vivienne watched me go with an expression she didn't even bother to hide this time, satisfied and cold and utterly certain she had won.

They dragged me through the front gates.

the sun sets, just past the treeline, where the forest opened onto the eastern ridge road, three hooded figures stepped out of the dark And blocked our path.