Chapter 5 The Vows That Bind
Bella's POV
The priest had a kind face.
Round cheeks, soft eyes. The type who probably held doors open for strangers and meant it. He was beaming at me like this was the best moment of his week.
I felt a little sorry for him.
Just a little.
“We are gathered here,” he began, his voice carrying easily across the hall, “to witness the union of two worlds. A bond that will bring lasting peace between the people of this city and the Moonstone Pack.”
Lasting peace.
I turned those words over quietly while the priest kept going, something about loyalty and duty and sacred bonds. My dress was tight at the waist. Rita had picked it out, which probably explained why it fit like a very polite punishment. The shoulders were stiff enough to make breathing feel like a project.
Standing beside me was the man I was about to marry.
I hadn’t looked at him yet. I’d kept my eyes forward the whole walk down, on the priest, on the floor, on my own hands. Partly because my heart was already doing too much. Partly because I didn’t want to give anyone in this room the satisfaction of watching me be nervous.
But when I reached the podium and finally looked up, my feet nearly stopped on their own.
It was him.
Not a guess. Not a maybe. The jaw, the build, the particular stillness he carried like a second skin. I knew it. I had watched him shift back into this form in the middle of a forest with men closing in around us, and I had not forgotten a single detail.
“You.” The word came out before I could stop it. “You are the alpha?”
My voice didn’t sound like mine. Too thin. Too unsteady.
He looked at me. His expression didn’t shift, not surprise, not recognition, nothing I could name. Just that same still, measuring look, like I was something he was trying to place.
Like he didn’t know me at all.
The priest cleared his throat.
I faced forward. My hands, hanging at my sides, had gone cold.
He didn’t know me.
He was standing close enough that I could have touched his arm, and he was looking at me the way you look at a stranger. Carefully, yes, with something working behind his eyes, but without any spark of the recognition I had been, without realizing it, quietly waiting for since the moment I walked in.
My chest had gone very tight, but I kept my face easy, because that was the one skill I had developed to a genuine art form, and I was not about to waste it now.
He turned his head slightly.
My father was in the front row. I caught his expression without meaning to. That smile he only wore when something went exactly the way he planned. Wide. Satisfied. Private.
He wasn’t smiling for me.
He was smiling for himself.
I already knew that. I looked at the flower arrangements instead. White and cream. Someone had put real effort into this. I wondered briefly if they’d been told I was human, and whether knowing had changed how much effort they put in.
Probably not. The flowers didn’t have opinions.
“Bella,” the priest said gently. “Please repeat after me.”
I straightened.
“I take you,” he prompted.
“I take you.” My voice came out thinner than I wanted. Like something wrung out. Three hours of sleep, a ceremony I hadn’t asked for, and somewhere at the back of my mind the particular exhaustion that comes not from running but from having run for years and finally stopping.
“To have and to hold, in unity and in peace.”
“To have and to hold. In unity and in peace.”
“For as long as the Moon Goddess wills it.”
A half-second pause.
“For as long as the Moon Goddess wills it.”
I didn’t know their Moon Goddess. Didn’t know what she expected or whether she had opinions about humans stepping into wolf territory. But the words were out of my mouth now, and something about saying them in this room, in this dress, standing next to this man, made my chest pull in a way I didn’t have a name for yet.
The priest moved to Rhys.
Rhys said his vows in a low, even voice. No pause, no variation. Each line landed like a signature on a document he had already decided to sign.
My hands were clasped so tightly in front of me that my fingers had gone slightly numb.
When it was done, when the priest declared us bound and the guests began to clap, my father came toward me with open arms.
I let him in. My own arms stayed at my sides.
He didn’t even seem to notice.
\-––––
The reception was small.
Close family, a handful of Rhys’s men near the walls, watching the room with the careful stillness of people paid to do exactly that. Someone had laid out food. I hadn’t touched it.
I was near the window, which was a habit, staying close to exits, when Rita appeared.
She was holding a glass of wine, wearing something that cost more than anything I owned, and smiling the way she always smiled when she thought she’d won a round.
“You look decent,” she said. Warmly.
“Thank you,” I said.
“I mean it as a compliment.” She tilted her head. “He’s not what I expected, you know. I thought there’d be a limp at least. All the rumors.” She sipped her wine. “You should be grateful.”
Grateful.
I looked at her for a moment.
“Is that the whole speech,” I said, “or is there more?”
Her lips curved. “Just saying goodbye, dear sister. You’re leaving today.” Her eyes drifted toward where Rhys stood across the room. “Though honestly, if I’d known he looked like that, maybe I wouldn’t have passed so quickly.”
“You didn’t pass,” I said. “You were replaced.”
The smile thinned. Just at the corners.
“Enjoy the woods, Bella.”
“Enjoy the city,” I said back. “While father still has it.”
I heard her heels on the floor as she walked away.
Small wins. I’d learned to collect them.
––––
“We’re leaving.”
I actually startled, which I hated, and turned to find Rhys standing directly beside me. Closer than I expected.
“Now?” I said. “The reception just…”
“Now.”
He turned and walked toward the door. No are you ready, no pause, no anything. Just his shoulders heading away from me.
I picked up my bag from near the wall, one small bag, everything I was taking from this house, and followed.
————
The car was large and quiet.
He sat on his side. I sat on mine. The gap between us was generous enough that a third person could have fit comfortably in the middle without touching either of us.
The city moved past my window. Streets I knew the names of. The bakery that smelled like cinnamon before eight in the morning. The fence near Logan’s street where I had waited for him more times than I could count.
My eyes went over all of it and didn’t catch on anything.
I tried conversation somewhere around the twenty-minute mark.
“Have you been to the city before? Other than today?”
Nothing.
“I’ve never been to your territory,” I continued, filling the quiet before I could think better of it. “I just thought maybe you could tell me something about what to expect, so I’m not completely…”
“You’ll see it when we get there.”
I looked at the side of his face.
“Right,” I said. “Okay.”
Silence.
“Is it far?”
“A few hours.”
“And is there anything I should…”
“Rest.” Flat. Final. Eyes forward. “It’s a long drive.”
I turned back to my window.
Rest.As if my body knew what that was right now. As if I hadn’t spent the last several days running, falling, sitting through betrayals with a straight back and dry eyes, and then standing at a podium reciting vows to a man who looked at me like a closed door.
I pressed my forehead lightly against the cold glass.
The city thinned. Lights spread further apart. Buildings gave way to trees that grew closer to the road with every kilometer, tall and dark and pressed together like they had agreed on something.
Then, through the gaps in them, lights appeared.
Dozens of them. Warm and gold, scattered across a landscape far wider and fuller than anything I had pictured. Buildings above the treeline. Something that looked, from this distance, less like a settlement and more like something that had simply always been there.
I sat forward without meaning to.
This was the Moonstone Pack.
And whatever I had been quietly steeling myself for during the entire drive, it was not this.