CHAPTER 6: The Necklace Lie

CHAPTER 6: The Necklace Lie

~ Kim ~

The world stopped.

I stared at Elena, waiting for her to laugh. Waiting for her to correct herself. Waiting for something that would make this make sense.

But she just stood there, perfectly composed, her blue eyes wide and innocent as a doe's.

"Excuse me?" My voice came out low, deadly. Four years in the Rogue Space hadn't broken me, and I wasn't about to let my sister start now. "What did you just say?"

"Kim, please don't make a scene," Elena whispered, her bottom lip trembling on cue. "It's fine. You can keep it."

"Make a scene?" I took a step toward her, the sapphire pendant suddenly burning against my collarbone like a brand. "Elena, you put this necklace in my hand. You pushed it into my hand. You said you wanted me to have it."

"Kim..." Tears welled in her eyes — perfect, glittering tears that caught the morning light. "Why are you doing this? On today of all days?"

"Doing what? Telling the truth?" My hand went to the clasp, fingers fumbling with the delicate chain. "Fine. Take the damn thing back. I never wanted—"

"After everything I've done for you?" Elena's voice cracked, and a single tear slid down her cheek with theatrical precision. "I asked you for one favor, Kim. One. To help me have a baby. To save our family. And this is how you treat me?"

I froze, my fingers still tangled in the chain at my neck.

What.

The hell.

Was happening.

"Elena." My voice shook with something dangerously close to rage. "I'm not the one who…"

"I genuinely want you to feel beautiful today, that’s why I didn’t complain when you insisted on having it." Her shoulders crumpled inward, making her look small and fragile and devastatingly wounded. "I gave you my home. My husband. And you couldn't even let me have one thing that was mine?"

A gasp came from somewhere to my left.

I turned my head slowly, and that's when I saw them. Three of the household staff frozen in the doorway, a silver tray suspended between them. Two of the early-arriving guests — pack elders in their formal robes — standing in the foyer with matching expressions of horror.

The whispers started immediately, low and venomous, traveling through the room like smoke.

The rogue sister... ...after everything Elena did... ...should still be locked up...

Heat flooded my face. The furious kind. The kind that made my power hum dangerously under my skin and the collar pulse warm against my throat.

"That necklace," Richard's voice cut through the room, cold and surgical, "was a gift from me to Elena. After she saved my life."

I whipped around to face him.

"What?"

"Four years ago." His blue eyes were chips of ice, fixed on the pendant at my throat with an expression of such open contempt that my breath caught. "That sapphire was my grandmother's. Elena has worn it every day since I gave it to her. Every. Single. Day." His jaw tightened. "And she would never part with it. Especially not for you."

"I didn't ask…"

"There are dozens of necklaces in her jewelry box, Kimberly." His voice was rising now, the Alpha command threading through it. "Pearls. Diamonds. Pieces worth ten times what that one is worth. But you wanted that one, didn't you? The one that mattered. The one that would hurt her most."

"I didn't ask for anything!" My voice cracked through the room, sharp as breaking glass. "She gave it to me! Elena, tell him! Tell him the truth!"

Elena buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

"What is going on in here?"

My mother. Followed by my father. Followed by Catherine.

Of course.

Because the universe apparently hated me with the burning intensity of a thousand suns.

"Elena? Sweetheart, what happened?" My mother rushed to her, wrapping her in an embrace I couldn't remember her ever giving me. "What did she do?"

She. Like I was the villain of a fairy tale. Like I was something that had crawled out from under the bed.

"Kimberly took the sapphire," Richard said flatly, before Elena could spin her version. "The one I gave Elena."

My father's face went gray. Catherine's mouth tightened into a thin, disappointed line.

"Kim." My mother's voice was the same one she'd used the night the Pack Council had dragged me away. Cold. Final. Ashamed. "Take it off. Now."

"I didn't…"

"Now."

Something inside me snapped clean in half.

I reached up and unhooked the clasp with steady hands, even though everything else inside me was shaking. I dropped the necklace onto the polished floor. The sapphire bounced once, twice, then rolled to a stop at Elena's feet.

"Keep it," I said, my voice perfectly level. "Keep all of it. Your necklace. Your husband. Your perfect little life." I lifted my chin and met every pair of eyes in that room. "I'm not marrying him."

The silence that followed was deafening.

Then Elena wailed.

It was an awful, broken sound, and she sank to the floor like her legs had given out, my mother going down with her, cradling her like she was made of spun glass.

"Kim, you can't…" my father started.

"Watch me."

I turned on my heel and walked out before any of them could see me cry.

…

The balcony off the east wing was empty. Cold morning air. Stone railing biting into my palms when I gripped it. I sucked in a breath that tasted like rain and tried to remember how to be a person.

‘She's lying,’ Rachel snarled in my head, pacing. ‘She's lying and they all believe her.’

"I know."

‘Why?’

"Because she's Elena," I whispered. "And I'm me."

"That's a very tragic sentence."

I spun around.

A man was leaning against the doorframe, hands tucked into the pockets of a dark suit that fit him like it had been sewn directly onto his body. He had Richard's dark hair, but his eyes were green, not blue, and there was a lazy crookedness to his mouth that suggested he found most of life faintly ridiculous.

"Who are you?"

"Logan Fell." He pushed off the doorframe and gave a small, ironic bow. "Richard's cousin. Black sheep of the family. Currently hiding from approximately forty pack elders who think I'm a disgrace." He tilted his head. "And you're the bride, I'm guessing. Either that or someone's wearing the wrong dress."

I let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob. "Don't make me laugh. I'm trying to commit to being furious."

"Terrible plan. Furious people make bad decisions." He came to lean on the railing beside me, leaving a polite distance between us. "Want to tell me why the bride is hiding on the balcony fifteen minutes before her own ceremony?"

"Not really."

"Excellent. I hate emotional conversations." He looked out over the garden. "We can stand here in companionable silence until someone finds us."

So we did.

For about ninety seconds.

"My sister set me up," I heard myself say. "Gave me a necklace that apparently means the world to her husband and then pretended I stole it. In front of everyone. And they believed her."

Logan whistled low. "That's diabolical. I respect the craft, even if I despise the artist."

"You're not going to tell me Elena would never do that?"

"I've known Elena since she bonded with my cousin. I would believe almost anything of her." He glanced at me sideways. "Including this."

Something warm and shaky uncurled in my chest. "You're the first person in two days who's said anything that wasn't a lecture."

"I'm contractually obligated to be insufferable. It's a Fell family trait." He nudged my elbow gently. "But also — they're looking for you. The whole house. Your mother's threatening to call in the Council."

"Let her."

"Kim." His voice softened, just a fraction. "Walking away today doesn't get you free. It gets you sent back. And I don't think you survived four years of that hellhole just to get shipped back over a necklace."

I closed my eyes.

He was right. I hated that he was right.

"Come back in," Logan said quietly. "Marry the douchebag. Give them what they want. And in the meantime, you've got at least one Fell in your corner. That's not nothing."

I opened my eyes and looked at him. There was nothing in his face but a kind of weary kindness, and after the morning I'd had, it felt like water in a desert.

"Okay," I whispered.

He offered his arm.

I took it.