Chapter 3 : The Gala

Elara POV

I don't speak. I don't think I can.

Nobody at the table says anything. My father closes the folder and keeps one hand flat on top of it.

"I've never met him," I say. It's a lie and it isn't. I know nothing about the man except his face and what he said to me on a roof.

"Tonight you'll meet him properly," my father says. "After that, we'll talk about what can be done."

"Can anything be done?"

He doesn't answer. Lucas says, "Papa," and my father says, "Not now." Lucas looks at his plate.

Sera folds her napkin and excuses herself. Her chair makes no sound this time.

Ezra slides closer on his seat and puts a piece of toast on my plate without a word. I haven't eaten since the muffin. I pick it up.

Theo pushes a new phone across the table. "Don't open the video," he says. I open it. Four million views. The comments are not kind. I put the phone face down.

* * *

By noon the house has been taken over. Racks of gowns line every hallway. Seamstresses move through the rooms with pins between their teeth. Two stylists argue in French beside the staircase. Someone shouts about the lighting in the east wing.

I stand against the wall and try to take up less room.

Sera is in the middle of it all. She moves between the racks like she has done this her whole life. She pulls a gown, holds it up, hangs it back. She knows every designer's name. A woman holds up gown after gown and Sera answers without looking at them. Nobody asks me anything. I have never chosen my own clothes. I wouldn't know where to start.

I see the dress before she does. It hangs alone on a separate rail. Dark green. Long and plain, no beading. I don't touch it. I just look. It's the first thing in this house I want. My stomach tightens. It's only a dress. I know it's only a dress.

She sees me looking. She crosses the room, takes it off the rail, and holds it against herself in the mirror. She turns over the tag and reads the price. Her smile widens.

"This one," she says to the room. "I want this one."

A hand takes it out of hers.

Lucas doesn't say a word. He walks it across the floor and holds it out to me. "I had this pulled at six this morning," he says. "For you."

"It's fine," I say. "Sera saw it first. She can have it. I don't mind."

"Elara." His voice isn't harsh. It isn't moving either.

Rafe comes down the stairs. "There are four hundred dresses in this house. She can have any of them." He looks at me. "That one is yours."

I stop arguing.

Sera hasn't moved. Her fingers are pressed together at her sides. Her face is completely still.

"Of course," she says. Light. Easy. "He's right. I don't even like it that much now." She smiles at me. "Take it, Elara. It'll look beautiful on you."

I smile back. Her thumbnail is pressed into the side of her finger. I watch it go white.

Twenty minutes later I'm on a platform with a seamstress pinning my hem when the sound comes from upstairs. Glass breaking. Something heavy. More glass.

Nobody in the room reacts. The seamstress keeps pinning. A stylist keeps talking.

I look at the ceiling.

* * *

When the seamstress finally lets me down, I ask for a minute. I climb the stairs to find my room and sit without anyone touching me.

A door in the east hall stands open a few inches. Water runs out from under it across the floorboards. A woman's voice comes through the gap, calm and low. I stop. I don't mean to listen. My feet decide.

Through the gap I see Sera in the middle of her room, hair coming loose. The dresser is bare. Glass and white lilies lie on the wet carpet. A woman in a travel coat stands in front of her.

"You saw it," Sera says. "I had it in my hands. They took it from me in front of the whole house. In front of her."

"I saw."

"She was scrubbing floors two days ago. Now she has a room and a closet and five brothers who'll do anything she says. And she gets Damian."

I stop breathing at the name. They say it like they have said it many times.

"She gets nothing," the woman says, "if you break things where the staff can hear. In private you can be as angry as you like. In public you are her sister. You are kind. Do you understand?"

"What are we doing?"

"Tonight there will be three hundred guests, cameras, and every family that matters." The woman smooths her coat. "Elara has never stood in a room with ten people watching her. Nobody has taught her where to stand, who to greet, what to say. We don't have to do anything to her. We only need the room to see it."

"How?"

"I'll arrange it. Your job is simple. Be warm. Stay beside her. Whatever happens, be the one standing next to her."

"And Damian?"

"By midnight he won't be able to look at her." She takes out her phone. "A caterer owes me a favor. That's all you need to know." She tilts Sera's chin up with one finger. "You are better than her. Act like it."

Footsteps come toward the door. I back into the alcove behind a tall vase stand and press myself flat to the wall. The woman walks past close enough that her coat brushes my sleeve. She doesn't look at me. She doesn't look at anything.

I stay there until her steps are gone. My hands are cold. My pulse is fast.

Nobody in this house knows me. If I say a word, it's mine against a woman who has sat at their table for sixteen years.

I say nothing. I go to my room and sit on the edge of the bed and look at my hands until the stylists come.

* * *

The stylists take five hours. Ezra sits on the floor with a velvet tray of earrings and holds each pair to my ear and shakes his head until he finds the right ones. Theo critiques everything else from the sofa. "Too beige. Too beige. You look like a hotel lobby. No. Yes. That one."

When they step back, I don't recognize her. Dark green dress. Hair pinned off my face. Eyes that look like they belong to someone who has slept. I touch my cheek. She touches hers. I wait for her to look back at me as the girl from the kitchen. She doesn't. She stands straighter than I do.

My father comes in last. He takes a thin gold ring with a crest from his pocket and puts it on my right hand. "Your grandmother's," he says. "No one here will ever step over you again." His hand stays on mine a second longer than it needs to. His eyes are wet. He doesn't wipe them.

Lucas waits at the door. "The Blackthorn Pack accepted the invitation. I sent it myself."

My stomach turns. "Why?"

"He rejected you in front of two hundred people." Lucas's voice is quiet. "I want him to see what he looked at and didn't see."

At the top of the staircase I stop. My hand finds the railing. Ezra leans in. "Just walk to Papa," he whispers. "We're right here." I count the steps. Twenty-two. I hear every one.

Below us the hall goes quiet in pieces. Conversations stop mid-word. Three hundred faces turn up.

"Elara Vale," the announcer says. "Heiress of the Vale bloodline."

Flashbulbs. A reporter shouts my name, a name I've had for fourteen hours.

I walk down.

At the bottom I find them. The Blackthorn table by the east window. His father. Vanessa in red. Callum on his feet, glass halfway to his mouth, not blinking.

He puts the glass on a passing tray without looking. The waiter has to stop.

Rafe tilts his head toward the window. "His father just told him," he says under his breath, "You threw away the Vale heiress for the Beta's daughter."

I keep my face still. My chest doesn't.

Vanessa's hand is on Callum's sleeve. Her mouth moves. He doesn't turn his head. I watch her fingers tighten, then drop.

Callum takes one step toward me. Just one step. He stops. Lucas shifts half a step to the left, and I can't see him anymore.

* * *

The doors at the far end open and the room goes quiet in a different way. People step back before he reaches them.

Black suit. Dark eyes. Him. He doesn't look at the crowd. He looks at me, only me.

My father takes the microphone. "Ladies and gentlemen, His Highness Prince Damian Morati. Heir to the Lycan throne."

The word Lycan makes the hall go still. I've only ever heard it whispered.

"Tonight my daughter claims her place," my father says. "And she claims what was promised at her birth. Their engagement."

Applause. Cameras. My hands are cold.

He stops in front of me. Close. His eyes are the same as on the terrace. His jaw is the same. Nothing in his face moves.

"I didn't agree to this either," he says, low enough that only I hear.

"Good," I say. "Then we agree."

He tilts his head. "You walked into traffic last night. I was told."

"Someone talks too much."

"Someone tells me everything."

Something crosses his face and is gone. His eyes drop to my mouth, then back to my eyes. Heat starts under my skin again. Neither of us says it.

Sera appears at my side with two glasses of sparkling water. "You were perfect," she says warmly. "Here. You must be thirsty." Her smile is steady. Her hand on her own glass is not.

I think about a caterer who owes a favor. I take the glass and set it on the next tray that passes. She watches it go.

Later, my brothers are pulled away by guests. Lucas to an Alpha. Rhys to the phone. I step into a quiet corridor for air.

"Elara."

I know the voice before I turn.

Callum stands three feet away. His eyes are red. His cuff is creased where he's been gripping it. "I made a mistake," he says. "Come back."

My heart is loud. My voice, when it comes, is calm. "You rejected me in front of two hundred people. I'm not yours."

"Elara, please—"

He grabs my wrist. His hand is shaking. So is mine. The bond flares through my arm and my knees nearly go. He feels it too. I see him feel it.

"Let go."

"I can't." His thumb moves over my pulse. Heat runs up to my shoulder and my breath catches before I can stop it. I hate that he hears it.

A hand closes around Callum's and lifts it off me.

Damian doesn't look at me. He looks at Callum. His grip closes on Callum's wrist. Callum's face tightens. Damian's eyes flash gold, once, and the air in the corridor changes.

"Remove your hand," he says. Then he turns to the hall, loud enough for every guest in earshot. "My fiancée."

Callum's face goes white. He looks at me, not at Damian. He's waiting for me to say it isn't true.

I say nothing. Down the corridor, a camera clicks.

Past Damian's shoulder, across the hall, I see Sera by the bar. She lifts her phone and reads it under the edge of the counter. I spent eleven years in a kitchen learning to read what people said about me across rooms.

Her lips move. One word.

Now.

A waiter with a tray starts toward me through the crowd. He is already looking at me. He is smiling.