Betrayed and locked up

Eliana Hart’s POV

Kai’s eyes stayed fixed on something behind me. His body went stiff.

“Mate,” he said again. Lower. Rougher.

He wasn’t looking at me anymore.

“Kai?” My voice came out small. “What’s wrong?”

He didn’t answer. He stepped back. His hand slid out of mine, and the space where it had been felt cold.

Then I heard it. The crowd was parting. People gasped. I turned to see what everyone was looking at.

A woman walked toward the altar. She moved slow, like she knew every eye was already on her. Her hair was dark and long. Her dress was deep red.

My body went cold before my mind caught up.

I knew that walk. I knew that tilt of her chin. My chest went tight with shock. I never thought I would see her again.

“Selene,” someone whispered near the front. The name moved through the crowd fast.

My stepsister.

“Mate,” she said, soft and breathless.

The whole clearing went silent.

My stomach turned. I already knew she was Kai’s first love. Everyone in the pack house knew, even if no one said it to my face. Before I ever came here, Selene and Kai were together. Then the mate bond chose me instead of her.

Two years ago, Selene left the pack in secret. She was pregnant, and the child wasn’t Kai’s. It belonged to a man from another territory, someone she’d never spoken of before or since. My father found out before anyone else did, and he sent her away quietly to hide the shame before it could reach Kai’s ears. Then he turned that shame on me. He said I had stolen her future the moment the bond chose me over her, like her mistakes were somehow mine to carry. He disowned me the same week the pack found out I was Kai’s mate. I never told Kai the real reason she left. It wasn’t my secret to give away, even after everything she put me through.

I never thought she would come back. I never thought I would have to stand in front of her again.

She stopped a few feet from the altar. Her eyes stayed on Kai, like I wasn’t even there. Then, for one second, they moved to me. I saw it — the same small, pleased look she used to wear right before she told our father another lie about me.

She still knew exactly how to ruin my life. She just had a bigger stage for it now.

“I’m sorry it took me so long,” she said, her voice shaking just right. “A seer found me. She told me you’d been waiting. That you were bewitched.” Her eyes flicked to me, cold, then went soft again the moment they returned to Kai. “This woman has been using dark magic on you. That’s why you didn’t know I was your true mate back then. She kept us apart.”

“That’s not true.” My voice cracked. “Kai, she’s my stepsister, I know her. She left two years ago, pregnant by another man in another pack. That’s the real reason she disappeared. Ask her why she’s really back now.”

Gasps broke out across the clearing.

Selene’s face crumpled, soft and wounded. “Don’t listen to her, Kai. She’s always been good at making herself the victim. She did it when she stole you from me, and she’s doing it now. Twisting my pain to make herself look innocent.”

The crowd turned ugly fast.

“Liar!” a woman near the front shouted.

“Wolfless and unclaimed for two years,” another voice called out. “Of course she used magic!”

The man from yesterday, the one who wouldn’t let me treat him, pushed to the front. His face looked pleased. “I knew something was wrong with her. Get rid of her!”

More voices joined in.

“Pack ruiner!”

“Fake Luna!”

Each word landed like a stone. My knees shook. I had spent two years proving myself — tending the sick, staying silent through every insult — and it was falling apart in front of me in one breath.

“Kai, please.” I reached toward him, but the guards were already closing in. “Look at me. I’ve never used magic. I don’t even know how. I’ve only ever tried to serve you and this pack.”

His jaw tightened. His eyes moved from Selene to me and back. I watched something shift behind them — confusion turning into certainty, right in front of me. Two years under his roof meant nothing next to ten seconds of her tears.

“Do I?” His voice was flat and cold. “I don’t know you at all, Eliana. I never did.”

The words hit harder than anything the crowd had thrown.

He turned fully to Selene. His face softened, the way it had never once softened for me. He took her hand the same gentle way he’d taken mine at the start of the ceremony.

“Guards,” he said, not looking at me. “Take Eliana to the holding cells. She bewitched me. She’s hidden what she is for two years.”

“No—” I stumbled back as two guards grabbed my arms, hard enough to bruise. “Kai, please. I’ve done nothing but serve you. I begged you every night to complete the bond. I cared for this pack like it was my own—”

“Enough.” His voice cracked through the clearing like a whip.

They dragged me away. My dress caught on the ground and tore. I stumbled, scraping my knee, but they pulled me up without mercy. The crowd kept throwing insults, the same people I had healed only days before.

“Get out, witch!”

“You never belonged here!”

I stopped hiding my tears. There was no point anymore. The pack that never fully accepted me had picked its side in seconds.

Before the trees swallowed the clearing, I caught one last look. Kai had already turned back to Selene. He lifted her hand to his lips. Torchlight lit up both their faces, and the pack bowed their heads to her as easily as if I had never stood at that altar at all.

The silver glow of his mark settled on her neck — the mark that should have been mine.

Something inside me cracked. Quiet. Final. Like glass giving way after holding too much weight for too long.

The guards shoved me into a cold stone cell and shut the door. I sank against the wall, my torn dress pooling around me. Then I let the tears come, full and shaking.

Not for the crown I’d never wear. Not even for the humiliation.

Just for two years spent loving a man who never once tried to love me back.

El, Gemma whispered, quiet and broken. I’m here. I’m still here.