Chapter Five - Two Lunas

Chapter Five

The King didn't look at her again.

He moved to the head of the table, sat, and the entire banquet resumed around him,  everyone pretending the last five minutes had been completely normal.

Gianna walked back to their seats with Cyrus's hand clamped around her elbow the entire way.

He let go the moment they sat down.

She could feel the anger coming off him in waves. 

She could see him struggling to keep it contained, because it had to be, because they were only forty feet from the Lycan King. 

Gianna picked up her fork and began eating.

The food was exceptional. She wasn't going to waste it on anxiety.

Across the table, someone laughed too loudly at something and then immediately calibrated down when heads turned. 

That was the way things were in this room. People couldn't fully enjoy themselves. 

Cyrus wasn't eating. He was sitting very straight, performing composure.

Gianna reached for her wine.

That's when she saw it.

Cyrus had turned slightly to speak to the man on his left, and the movement shifted his collar, and there it was – behind his right ear, just below the hairline. A crescent-shaped mark, dark against his skin, the kind that came from a wolf bond.

Gianna looked at it for a moment.

Then she looked closer.

That mark wasn't fresh. The edges were fully settled, the color even. That wasn't days old or even weeks old. That mark had been there for months.

She set her wine glass down.

Months, which meant that Cyrus and Pietra's bond – the one he'd described to her as something that happened during a patrol, a wolfsbane poisoning, a woman who nursed him back to health and turned out to be his fated mate – had been forming long before any patrol. 

Long before he'd brought Pietra through those gates and presented the whole thing as something recent and unavoidable.

Gianna stared at the side of his face.

He felt it. He turned and looked at her with an expression that said what now.  

She just held his gaze for a second, then looked away.

She wasn't angry. She was past angry. All she felt now was clarity. 

He had been with Pietra for months. He had been building that bond for months. And he still wouldn't give her a divorce — not because he wanted her, not because the marriage meant anything to him, but because he didn't want to deal with the political consequences.

He was using her as a shield and a status symbol while keeping Pietra on the side, and he had the nerve to stand in her bedroom and call her scheming.

Fine, Gianna thought. If he won't do it, I'll do it myself.

She looked toward the head of the table.

Nolan was listening to something an older Alpha was saying, his expression neutral, one hand resting on the table. 

He hadn't looked her direction since he'd walked away from her after the fall. But she had the distinct and unexplainable feeling that he was aware of exactly where she was in the room at all times.

She was going to talk to him. 

She was going to explain the situation, and ask for the divorce to be approved. 

Cyrus had made it obvious he wasn't going to bring it up himself – or if he did, he'd frame it entirely on his own terms.

She needed to get ahead of it.

She set down her fork and shifted in her seat, calculating the right moment –

"Your Majesty."

She heard Cyrus's voice. 

Gianna's head snapped left.

Cyrus had straightened in his chair and was addressing Nolan directly, two seats down the table, with the careful tone of a man who had been rehearsing this.

 Nolan turned to look at him. The table quieted immediately. 

"I hope you'll forgive me for raising something during the banquet," Cyrus said. "But the matter has been weighing on me, and I would rather speak plainly than let it sit."

Nolan said nothing, which was, apparently, permission.

Cyrus folded his hands on the table.

"Gianna and I have been married for two years," he said. "I have enormous respect for Your Majesty's decision to arrange this match, and I have never questioned that judgment. But I want to be honest with you, because I think Valemont deserves honesty." He paused. "Gianna has not been able to fulfill the role of Luna. The pack requires someone steady – someone the wolves can trust and look to. Gianna is..." He paused again for effect, "She has a difficult temperament. She has mistreated servants. She creates conflict where there should be stability. The pack has suffered for it."

Gianna sat completely still.

She could feel the eyes in the room turning towards her now, watching her expression and how she was going to counter this accusation.

Cyrus continued. "Some months ago I was injured on patrol. Wolfsbane poisoning – serious enough that I was unconscious for three days. A she-wolf named Pietra found me. She stayed with me. Three days and three nights without leaving, without being asked to, without expecting anything in return." He let that sit for a moment. "She is my fated mate. I discovered it during my recovery."

He looked at Nolan directly. "I am not asking to remove Gianna dishonorably. I have the deepest respect for Alpha Alexandra and would never insult Highmoon. But Pietra is kind, she is capable, and she loves this pack already. She would be a Luna Valemont could be proud of." He paused again, "I'm asking for Your Majesty's blessing to bring Pietra into the marriage. To give her the Luna title alongside Gianna, so that the pack has the leadership it needs."

There was silence. 

Gianna looked at Cyrus  for a long, full second.

Two Lunas.

He wanted to keep her — keep the political protection her name provided, keep Alexandra's alliance, keep the King's approval — and also have Pietra. 

In the entire history of the wolf pack, she was fairly certain no Alpha had ever had the audacity to stand in front of a king and ask for that with a straight face and frame it as something he was doing for the pack.

Gianna's hand found her fork under the table.

She gripped it.

If Nolan hadn't been sitting four feet away, she would have put it through the back of Cyrus's hand.