CHAPTER 004: THE PUBLIC REJECTION

Sienna's POV

Something woke inside me before my mind caught up to my body. Heat pushed out from behind my ribs, pressing against bone. I put my palm over the spot. My breath came slow and even.

My wolf had gone quiet in a new way. She'd stopped pressing herself small at the back of my mind. Now she paced, ears forward, weight on her front paws.

Sienna. The name came before I understood I was hearing it.

"Juvien?"

Something old moved through me, a voice that had lived in my chest my whole life without words until now.

"Where have you been? Lucas humiliated me in front of everyone. I called for you and you weren't there."

A low growl answered first, then words I could understand. They cut deep. Cut where I live. I could not reach you through that. He smelled wrong long before tonight. I told you. You did not listen.

"You never said anything like that to me."

I showed you. Every time my hackles rose when he touched you. Every time I refused to run beside his wolf. You called it nerves.

Guilt twisted in my chest.

He was pack once, Juvien said. Now he is prey. He does not know it yet.

Footsteps in the corridor pulled me back. Noah's stride, even, getting louder. I pulled on the clothes he'd left folded on the chair. My fingers fumbled with the ties. The silk felt rough against my raw skin. The warmth in my chest was already gone.

Noah came in before I'd finished dressing, holding a small glass vial. His face stayed blank, but his eyes kept moving to me and away again.

"Your eyes," he held it out. "Take this."

I took it. Our fingers touched for half a second and he pulled back fast, looking at the vial instead of my face. I swallowed it without asking. Cold went down my throat, and the silver in my eyes dimmed to brown.

Move, Juvien said.

I put on the dark glasses. They hid what glow was left. I stepped into the hallway. Tile clicked under my boots. I watched every door as I passed.

Voices drifted closer and I pressed my back to the wall and held my breath. Maids passed first. Then two warriors, slowing near where I stood before walking on. The bond pulled hard toward the grand staircase. I went the other way and found a linen closet behind the east wing. I counted to twenty against the wall. The pressure in my chest did not loosen. It sharpened.

We cannot hide, Juvien said. We exit or we are caged.

I made myself move.

Footsteps ahead. Near the staircase, Lucas stepped out before I could avoid him. His jaw was unshaven, his collar crooked from yesterday. His hand lifted toward my shoulder, then stopped and curled into a fist.

"You're awake," his voice was thin.

"Yes." I didn't stop walking.

The bond answered anyway, his regret hit me hard enough to buckle my knees. I grabbed the railing. Every step away from him felt like something hooked into me being pulled loose. He let me go without following.

Private first, Juvien growled. He cannot be weak where they see.

The Great Hall, Two Hours Later

The smell hit me first when the doors opened, lilies, too sweet, and under it the weight of dozens of auras at once. I stopped in the doorway a second longer than I meant to. Then the room turned toward me, whisper by whisper, until the whole hall was watching.

"Everyone is looking at her." Ivy stepped into my path, blood-red silk sweeping the floor, her voice pitched to carry.

Lucas didn't look at either of us. He crossed straight to the dais where his father waited. The two of them traded a look, and Alpha Adrian raised one palm. The hall went silent.

"I, Lu—" The word broke in his mouth. He took an unsteady step toward the edge of the platform, his hand reaching for nothing. "Sienna."

For three full seconds, nobody in that hall was watching an Alpha. His shoulders had dropped. His hand still hung in the air between us. His throat worked around words that wouldn't come.

Then his eyes found his father's. Something in him snapped back into place. His aura pushed outward, rattling the chandeliers, dust falling onto faces, and he forced his spine straight again.

"I, Lucas, reject Sienna Alexander as my Luna!"

It started as barely a whisper and ended as a scream.

The bond broke. Sound went to static. My vision went gray at the edges. Blood ran from my nose, hit my lip, copper in my mouth. Juvien pulled back deep and cold, leaving me hollow in a hall full of people.

"You will feel it, Sienna!" Lucas came down the dais steps, his eyes bloodshot, his voice climbing. "Why didn't it break you? You're weak. What are you?"

His aura slammed forward, air around me getting thick, pressing down hard enough to buckle a spine. I stayed standing, teeth gritted, refusing the floor even as my body swayed toward it. My bones ached like they no longer fit inside my skin. Then, with a sound like fabric tearing, the pressure gave.

Lucas paled and stumbled back. Where his skin had brushed mine, something went off, and the space left by our broken bond flooded with raw energy, my body the only channel wide enough to carry it. He hit the edge of the dais hard enough that the sound echoed. Silence swallowed the hall.

"Sienna is cursed!" Ivy pointed at me, her free hand fisted in her gown. "Look at her! She's attacking the Alpha! She is a stain on our past!"

My knee hit marble before I registered falling. Darkness crept at the edges of my vision.

Up, Juvien snarled. They see blood and call it weakness. Show them teeth.

Something cold took the heat's place this time, spreading fast from my ribs to my fingertips. I pushed myself up on one hand. When I spoke, the words came from lower than my throat.

"Permission?" I held Ivy's gaze. "Who gave you permission to speak?"

She flinched back behind her mother instead of answering. Morrigan stepped forward in her place, eyes fixed on the Alpha.

"Alpha, the records from the healer's guild are clear on the nature of her mother's passing." Morrigan's voice stayed soft. "The Black Tosil does not manifest by accident. It is a mark of a soul that has begun to rot. To keep her is to invite that decay into the pack's heart."

Silence dropped over the hall. My mother. Something cracked open in my chest and I couldn't hold it shut. Her face surfaced in my mind, poisoned now by Morrigan's words. I stared at her, mouth open, nothing coming out, my nails digging half-moons into my own palm.

"Show the proof," Alpha Adrian demanded.

Morrigan drew the Black Tosil from her robes, a warped black object trailing the faint scent of decay.

"The healers who found it. Bring them forward," Alpha Adrian said.

She didn't blink. "The discovery was taxing for them. They have retired to the southern border. Convenient, yes. But the seal on these documents is authentic. Check it. The seal verifies the report, not the relic. The relic is demonstration, not evidence."

Murmurs moved through the crowd. Everyone in that hall could see how thin it was, and none of it mattered.

I found Lucas's eyes across the room. He took in the blood on my lip, the sway in my stance, and started toward me before catching himself, glancing instead at the crowd watching him. When his eyes came back to mine, his jaw tightened and his hand dropped to his side.

"She is a danger!" His voice cracked on the way out. "From this moment, she is a slave. Property of the pack. I hereby claim Ivy as my true Luna!"

He bent his head to her throat and bit down. The mark flared gold, and the hall erupted into applause laced with unease.

I stood alone at the center of it, copper thick on my tongue. My hands had gone steady.

Remember this, Juvien said. Every face that laughed. We do not forget.