Fraida Is Luna

Two

Reylap’s POV

I heard the music before I even reached the gates, and I knew it was a celebration. I could hear drums and voices and that particular kind of joy that carries across pack grounds when there's good news, and for one foolish, breathless second my heart lifted, because I thought it was for me.

I thought Malik had started without me, that he'd been so impatient to begin our night that he hadn't waited, and I was already smiling as I quickened my pace and called out to the guards.

"Open the gate. I'm late enough as it is, and if Malik starts complaining, I’m blaming both of you.” I grinned.

Neither of them moved.

The smile on my face faltered slightly.

I slowed. “...Cute. Now open the gate.”

Nothing.

I stopped walking. "Did you hear me?"

"We heard you," the first one said. "You're not cleared to enter."

The smile died. "I'm sorry — what?"

"No entry." He didn't even have the decency to look uncomfortable about it. "Those are our orders."

I looked at him for a long moment, then at the gate, then back at him, because surely this was some kind of mistake. Right??"I am Reylap Stark. I live here. That music in there?" I pointed past his shoulder. "That is my ceremony. Now open this gate before I make sure you regret the day you were assigned to this post."

The guard's jaw tightened but he didn't move.

Oh, this is insane.

And that was when I heard footsteps and turned to find Roman walking toward me. Roman, Malik’s enforcer, only appeared in situations that involved pack authority or enforcement.

"Roman." I exhaled with relief. "Tell them to let me in."

He stopped in front of me and said nothing for seconds.

My relief curdled. "Roman. What is going on?"

"You've been summoned to the council," he said. "Criminal charge."

The words landed like stones dropping into still water. "I was already questioned at Dark Moors. This has to be a mistake —"

"It's not a mistake. Don't be delusional."

"Then let me speak to Malik. Right now. Bring him here."

Roman smirked. "He's not available."

"He's my mate, Roman. He is always available to me."

"Not tonight," he said quietly.

Roman took my arm and I let him, because fighting at the gate felt pointless when Malik was somewhere inside and I could still fix this if I could just get to him.

We moved through the side entrance and I kept my eyes forward, kept my breathing even, kept telling myself this was a misunderstanding that would be over in ten minutes.

Then we passed the great hall window.

I really don't know what made me look, but I did and what I saw on the other side of that glass stopped me so completely that Roman walked two steps ahead before he realized I wasn't moving.

Malik and Farida.

She was in white, my white, the color I had chosen for tonight,and his hands were on her face as if she was something precious, like she was something he couldn't bear to look away from, and his head was dipping toward her neck with the slow, tenderness of a man who was deeply in love.

He was marking her!

The same neck…the same position. My hand flew to my own neck without thinking, fingers finding the small raised mark he'd pressed his lips to three months ago in the dark, the one he'd given me privately before we were ready to announce anything, and it was still there, warm under my fingertips, still mine.

Or so I thought.

"No." The words tore out of me. "No, that — that is not —"

"Reylap." Roman's hand tightened on my arm.

"Get off me." I pulled free and pressed my hand against the glass without thinking, like I could reach through it, as if I could stop what was already happening. "That is my ceremony. That is my — Malik!" His name ripped out of me before I could stop it. "MALIK!"

He didn't look up or flinch. Farida did though. Her eyes slid sideways toward the window and found mine through the glass, and she smiled with satisfaction.

Then, her dark eyes dropped to my stomach, before coming back up.

Roman pulled me away before I could scream again and I let him this time because my legs had stopped working properly, and there was nothing I could do about it from the wrong side of the glass.

I fought the tears threatening to slip out of my eyes and failed.

I had never said no to this pack. Not once in eight years. Every callout, every emergency, every child burning with fever in the middle of the night, I always came. I came because this was my home and these were my people and I had built everything I was inside these walls.

And Malik knew that. He knew exactly what he was taking when he put Farida in my place.

Roman steered me forward and that was when the crowd found me.

It started with one voice.

"There she is."

Then another. Then another. And suddenly the path ahead was lined with faces I knew , faces I had healed, children I had pulled back from the edge of death — and not one of them looked at me like I was that person anymore.

“Murderer!”

Something hit the side of my shoulder and burst. Rotten egg slid down the front of my coat.

The smell hit a second later. A few people gasped. Someone laughed nervously.

"Murderer!"

"Get out of our pack!"

I stopped walking. Roman pulled me forward but my feet had forgotten how to move because I was looking at a woman near the front of the crowd, Sera, whose son I had delivered two winters ago with my bare hands when the midwife didn't make it in time.

If it's any comfort to me, she didn't throw anything.but she didn't stop the person beside her either.

Roman yanked me forward. "Keep moving."

They didn't announce me.They didn't need to because every head in that room was already turned toward the door when Roman pushed me through it, and the sight of me, soaking and shaking and stripped of every dignity I'd walked into this pack with, seemed to satisfy everyone.

I stood in the center of that chamber and looked at all of them. Elders who had called me by name. Warriors whose wounds I had closed with my own hands. Pack members who had sent their children to me in the night and trusted me to bring them back.

Not one of them looked away in shame.

And then I found Malik.He was standing at the front of the room, Farida seated comfortably beside him, and he was looking at me with an expression so cold and empty it made my chest cave in.

Why is she here??

"Malik." His name came out of me, strained. "Please."

He said nothing.

Farida tilted her head and looked at me as if I was garbage.

An elder cleared his throat. "Reylap Stark. You stand before this council accused of the murder of Elder Koran by deliberate administration of wolfsbane." He paused. "How do you respond?"

The room waited.

I looked at Malik one more time, willing him to stop this, to stand up, to be the man I thought I knew, but he just looked back at me with those empty eyes and said nothing.

It broke what was left of me.

I lifted my chin anyway.

"I respond," I said, slowly. "by telling every person in this room that someone is lying. And before this is over —" my eyes found Farida and stayed there, "— everyone will know exactly who."

Farida's smile widened slowly, and when she finally spoke her voice was so soft, so unbearably sweet, that half the room probably thought she was being kind.

"Why don't you start by bowing to your Luna?" She tilted her head, dark eyes moving over me. "You never could bring yourself to respect me properly, could you, Rey? Even when we were children." She sighed like it genuinely saddened her. "I always thought it was jealousy."

The room was completely silent.

My ears started ringing. Luna? I now realized that the ceremony started long before I arrived and it was over. While Roman was dragging me through my own pack grounds with rotten egg on my coat, Farida was in that hall becoming everything I was supposed to be.

And then she came here to watch me fall.

"You finished the ceremony," I said quietly, "and still had the nerve to show up here."

She smiled. "Why wouldn't I? The best part was always going to be this. Now, kneel, sister. And kiss my feet.”

My throat closed instantly.