04 Rejected

Seraphina’s POV

A messenger came for me before the sun had fully cleared the ridge, one of the council's runners, a young wolf I didn't recognise, who wouldn't meet my eyes when he spoke.

"The council has reached its decision on the household of Cassian Vale. Your presence is required in the square within the hour."

"And my father? Will he be there?"

He didn't answer that. He bowed, too formally, the way you bow to someone you already feel sorry for, and left before I could ask again.

I told myself it meant nothing strange. I told myself, dressing with hands that wouldn't stop shaking, that of course they wanted me there, a daughter should be present when her father's fate is decided, whatever that fate turned out to be. That was all this was. I would stand beside my mother, and I would watch, and whatever the council said, I would be there to hear it with him in spirit, even if he couldn't see my face in the crowd.

I believed it enough to let my mother hold my hand the whole walk there and not ask me why I was shaking so badly I could feel it in her fingers too. I was afraid for him. Kael’s eyes had said a lot the previous night, but hope wasn’t among his words. 

The square was already full when we arrived. Hundreds of them, wolves I had grown up beside, wolves who had danced at my mating celebration four nights ago and told me the Goddess doesn't make mistakes, standing shoulder to shoulder around the square's edge, and not one of them would hold my eyes for longer than a second. I searched the platform for my father. He wasn't there. Only Kael, standing at its centre, and Alaric a half step behind his shoulder, and the First Elder in front of them both with a scroll already unrolled in his hands.

‘Where is he?’ Isolde demanded, low and uneasy inside me. ‘Why isn't he here? They wouldn't sentence him without making him stand for it. Even these polished old vultures cannot be that shameless.’

"I don't know."

The First Elder lifted his hand, and the square went quiet the way a held breath goes quiet, and for one terrible, hopeful second I thought: maybe this is good. Maybe they found something. Maybe this is the part where they tell us all it was a mistake.

"Seraphina Vale." The Elder's voice carried flat and formal across the square. "Come forward."

I didn't understand. I looked at my mother and she looked as lost as I felt, and someone's hand, not unkind, just efficient, touched my shoulder and guided me forward, toward the platform, toward Kael, and it was only when I was standing beneath him, looking up into a face I had kissed three nights ago like it belonged to me, that some cold animal part of me finally understood this had never been about my father's verdict at all. Not today. Today was about me.

"No." I said it before he'd said anything, before anyone had said anything, because some part of me had already read it in the way Kael wouldn't quite look at me. "Kael. What is this?"

"Seraphina." My name in his mouth again, except this time it didn't sound like something he'd been saving. It sounded like something he was already grieving.

The Elder continued, because Elders do not stop for a girl's fear. "For the safety and integrity of Blackridge, and in light of the treason findings against the household of Cassian Vale, the council requires the Alpha to sever all bonds that tie this pack's leadership to a name now marked as traitor."

"Kael," I said his name like a question. Like if I said it softly enough, gently enough, he might remember that four nights ago he'd told me, whatever happens, you stand beside me, and mean it the way he'd meant it then. "Kael, look at me. Please. You don't have to do what they're telling you."

He looked at me. That was the worst part, he didn't look away. His eyes were wet, glassy, holding tears he refused to let fall in front of four hundred witnesses, and his jaw was working like he was trying to physically hold the words back behind his teeth.

"I have to." His voice cracked clean through the middle of it. "If I don't, they'll say I can't be trusted to lead. They'll say the Vale poison runs in my choices too. Seraphina, I don't...” He stopped. Started again, quieter, like he was speaking only to me now and had forgotten the whole square was listening. "I don't want to do this."

"Then don't."

"I have to."

"You don't." My voice broke apart on the word. I could feel every eye in that square on my face and I didn't care anymore, I let them see it, let them see me shaking, let them see the tears finally spilling over because I was done pretending I could hold myself together through this. "Kael, please. You promised me forever. You said it four days ago and you meant it, I know you meant it, I felt you mean it...”

"Seraphina." Alaric's voice, gentle, from just behind Kael's shoulder. Not sharp. Not cruel. Almost kind. "It will be easier for both of you if it's said quickly."

Kael's throat moved. His hands, at his sides, had curled into fists so tight I could see them shaking from where I stood.

"Seraphina Vale." He said my name a third time, and this time his voice had gone hollow, stripped of everything but the ceremony it now had to carry. A single tear finally broke loose and he didn't wipe it away, didn't seem to notice it at all, like his whole body had stopped being able to manage more than one kind of pain at a time. "For the safety and integrity of Blackridge, I, Kael Draven, Alpha of this pack, reject you as my mate."

The square didn't gasp. It went silent in a way that was worse than gasping.

I felt it land somewhere underneath my ribs, physical, absolute, a door slamming shut on a room I hadn't even finished walking into. Isolde screamed, all her wit and fury ripped down to one raw, wounded sound tearing through me from somewhere too deep to reach, and my knees went out from under me before I understood they were going.

I was on the ground. The frozen dirt bit through my skirts, through my palms where I'd caught myself, and I knelt there shaking, sobbing, unable to get enough air to make a sound that matched the size of what had just been done to me.

I looked up at him through the blur of it. His hands had come off his sides, I watched them start to reach, watched the beginning of a man moving toward someone he loved and had just shattered anyway, and then Alaric's hand settled on his arm, quiet, unhurried, and Kael stopped where he stood.

He stayed on the platform. Above me. While I knelt in the dirt his own voice had put me in, tears streaming, both hands pressed to the place under my ribs where the bond had just been torn out by its roots, and he did not come down.

"Four nights ago," I whispered, not even sure if my voice carried far enough for him to hear it, "you promised me forever."

He was crying. I could see that much even through my own tears, the Alpha of Blackridge, standing tall and formal and utterly destroyed, weeping silently in front of his entire pack and doing nothing at all to stop what he'd just done.

He didn't answer me. He didn't move. Isolde howled beneath my skin, grief turning every note feral, and I understood, kneeling there in the frozen dirt, that whatever came next, I would be facing it alone.