Chapter 4: A Deal With a King

I didn't sleep that night.

I lay there staring at the ceiling of a room that wasn't mine, in a bed that smelled like cedar and smoke instead of home, replaying those two guards' voices over and over until the words stopped making sense from repetition. He didn't have a choice. Orders.

Someone had ordered Kane to reject me. In front of the entire pack. On our bonding night.

By the time the first gray light of morning crept through the window, I'd made up my mind. I wasn't going to sit in this beautiful, borrowed room and wait politely for answers to be handed to me. I was going to get them myself.

I found Ronan in a room down the hall that looked like some cross between a war room and a library, maps spread across a long table, guards speaking to him in low voices that cut off the second I stepped through the door. He looked up, and something in his expression shifted when he saw me — not quite a surprise, more like he'd been expecting this exact confrontation eventually, just not this early.

"Everyone out," he said, and the room emptied in seconds.

"You knew," I said, before the door had even fully shut behind the last guard. "Last night. When you said rejection doesn't happen without cause. You already suspected something, didn't you?"

Ronan didn't bother denying it. "I suspected. I didn't know."

"And now?"

He studied me for a long moment, weighing something behind those gold eyes. "Sit down, Luna."

"I don't want to sit down. I want you to tell me what you know."

"Sit down," he said again, quieter this time, and something about the low, steady command in his voice made my body obey before my mind caught up with the decision. I hated that. I hated it and some traitorous part of me also didn't hate it at all, and I really didn't have the emotional bandwidth to examine that particular feeling right now.

He came around the table and leaned against it, arms crossed, close enough that I had to tilt my head up to hold his gaze. "The Elder Council governs pack law across the territory. They answer to no single Alpha, which means they have the authority to override a bond if they believe it threatens pack stability."

"Threatens it how? I'm nobody. My family's barely tolerated as it is."

"That's what I intend to find out." His jaw tightened. "But I have a theory, and you're not going to like it."

"Tell me anyway."

"Your bloodline isn't disgraced by accident, Luna. Disgrace like that — generational, permanent, the kind that follows a family for decades — usually gets manufactured. Someone benefits from your family staying weak and dependent. I think someone's been benefiting from it for a long time."

The floor felt like it tilted slightly beneath me. "That's not — my father made mistakes. Business mistakes, years ago, before I was even born. That's why—"

"Is that what you were told, or what you witnessed?"

I opened my mouth to argue and found I didn't actually have an answer. Every story about my family's disgrace had come secondhand, from whispers and hallway gossip and the careful, clipped way my parents avoided the subject entirely. I'd never actually seen proof of anything.

Before I could untangle that thought further, the door burst open.

A woman stood in the doorway, dark-haired, sharp-featured, dressed in pack colors I didn't immediately recognize, flanked by two guards who looked distinctly unhappy about letting her through. She scanned the room until her eyes landed on me, and something cold and calculating settled over her expression.

"So the rumors are true," she said, voice dripping with false sweetness. "The King really is harboring a rejected mate."

"Selene." Ronan's voice went flat, dangerous in a way I hadn't heard from him yet. "You weren't invited."

"I don't need an invitation to retrieve pack property." Her eyes flicked to me, dismissive and hungry all at once. "Luna Hart belongs to the Voss pack, Your Majesty, rejection or not. Her presence here, uninvited, on Lycan land, violates at least three treaties I can think of off the top of my head."

"She's a guest," Ronan said.

"She's a liability." Selene took a step further into the room, entirely unbothered by the way the temperature seemed to drop several degrees the moment she did. "Kane wants her back. The pack needs her back, whether she's bonded to him or not. There are... complications... to a rejection of this public. Things that require her presence to resolve."

Something about the way she said complications made my skin crawl.

"What complications?" I asked.

Selene's smile was thin, sharp, entirely without warmth. "That's between the pack and its Alpha, sweetheart. Nothing you need to concern yourself with. Just come home quietly, and we can avoid this becoming a diplomatic incident."

"She's not going anywhere," Ronan said, and the authority in his voice made even Selene's confident posture falter slightly.

"With respect, Your Majesty, that's not your decision. She's not bonded to you. She has no claim here, no protection under Lycan law, nothing that gives you the right to keep pack property against pack wishes."

"Then I suppose we'll have to change that," Ronan said quietly.

The room went very, very still.

Selene's eyes narrowed, the calculating look sharpening into something closer to alarm. "What are you suggesting?"

Ronan didn't look at her when he answered. He looked at me, gold eyes steady, unreadable, and something in that look made my heart slam hard against my ribs.

"I'm suggesting," he said, "that Luna Hart isn't going back to a pack that already tried to discard her once. Not while there's a way to keep her here permanently."

I stared at him, the room suddenly feeling very small, very warm, very much like the walls were closing in around a decision I hadn't agreed to make yet.

"Ronan," I said carefully. "What exactly are you suggesting?"

He held my gaze for one long, charged moment before he finally answered.

"A Lycan bonding. Between you and me.”