Chapter 21 The Matron's Accusal
Aurelia
The steam in the bathroom thickened, turning the air heavy and oppressive, as if the room itself were holding its breath.
I opened my mouth to speak, my voice barely above a whisper. “I saw a shadow outside.”
Ravina’s mocking laugh sliced through the air. She clapped her hands twice, the sound echoing off the black marble like applause at a bad performance.
“A shadow, she says.” Her lips curled in disdain. “Tell me, Luna, was it a wyvern? A dragon? Or perhaps the ghost of your own guilty conscience?”
Zhayad’s head snapped toward her. His voice was low, carved from ice. “Let. Her. Finish.”
The command landed like a physical blow. Ravina’s smirk faltered for half a heartbeat before she recovered, her chin lifting in defiance, but she fell silent.
I drew in a shaky breath, forcing the words past the knot in my throat.
“There was… something outside the glass. A shadow. It was tall, and it looked wrong. It moved too fast, too smooth. The moment I noticed it, it was gone. But it left something behind. My instincts just knew it was a note, so I opened the window, took it, and it said—”
Ravina stepped forward before I could finish, producing the folded note from the folds of her robe with the flourish of a conjurer.
“No need to strain yourself, dear.” Her tone dripped false sweetness. “I have the note right here.”
She unfolded it slowly, letting the paper catch the lights so Zhayad could see the short slanted script.
She read aloud in a clear voice, each word a nail driven deeper than it was supposed to.
“‘My daughter, thank you for the valuable piece of information you shared with me last time. I will need your help at the border. The vial you gave me must be tested on Alpha Zhayad’s borders. It will weaken the wards, block any kind of shift, and then we can attack. See you at the border.’”
The room went deathly still. The parchment trembled in Ravina’s fingers, not from nerves, but from the triumph she could barely contain.
I stared at the note like it was a live snake. That wasn’t what I’d read. In fact, that wasn't the note I'd received.
The original had been vague, ominous, it had felt like a warning wrapped in paternal concern.
This version was a confession. A blueprint for treason.
My gaze flew to Zhayad. He hadn’t moved.
Hadn’t even blinked. But the air around him had changed, it was charged, electric, like the moment before lightning strikes.
The mate bond pulsed between us, flooding me with fragments of his emotions: disbelief warring with suspicion, hurt buried beneath a rising tide of cold fury.
His eyes, those beautiful, deadly green eyes, locked on the note.
Then slowly, painfully, they lifted to mine. The look he gave me wasn’t anger.
It was worse.
It was the look of a male who had just realized the woman he’d bled for, killed for, fucked into healing… might have been playing him all along.
How could I even defend myself? Ravina hadn’t just stolen the note, she’d erased it. She wiped away the original note my father had written, then sat down with ink and patience and recreated his slanted, arrogant script.
“Zhayad,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “That isn’t…. it’s not what the original note says. Someone changed it. Ravina is lying. She’s framing me. I heard her in the garden. I saw her hand off a vial to a sentinel. I stopped it tonight, that’s why I ran. That’s why—”
Ravina’s laugh was soft this time, almost pitying.
“Oh, sweet girl. Always the victim. Always the innocent wolfless shifter with the tragic backstory.” She turned to Zhayad, her eyes wide and earnest. “Alpha, I found this slipped under the study door, the same study where she spends hours alone. The same study with the eastern window that overlooks the garden. The timing matches perfectly with when the wards first began to flicker.”
Me? In the study? For hours? Ravina was a lying bitch.
Zhayad’s hand closed around the note. The paper crumpled in his fist.
He didn’t look at Ravina.
“Out,” he said.
It was one word, but it sounded like a quiet, final order.
Ravina bowed and backed toward the door, but not before shooting me one last look of pure, venomous satisfaction.
The door clicked shut, and silence swallowed the room again.
Zhayad turned to me fully now, still blood-streaked, every muscle taut with barely restrained violence.
He stepped closer. Close enough that I could smell the copper on his skin, the pine and smoke that was him, the faint trace of my own arousal still clinging between us.
He lifted the crumpled note between us like evidence in a trial.
“Read it to me,” he said. “Word for word. Tell me what you actually saw. Tell me why you hid it. Tell me why I shouldn’t believe every syllable of this confession right now.”
My throat closed, and tears burned hot behind my eyes.
“I didn’t write this,” I choked out. “I swear on the moon, on our bond, on everything, I didn’t. But I did get a note from him. I hid it because I was terrified you’d think exactly what you’re thinking right now. That I’m his. That I’m poison. That I’m… betraying you.”
His gaze never wavered. The mate bond throbbed painfully, pleading, desperate for him to believe me.
He reached out to press the crumpled note into my shaking palm.
“Then prove it,” he sounded pained. “Prove it right now. Or I swear to every god watching, little mate… I will lock you in this room until the war is over, and you will never see the moon again.”
As I watched him turn his back on me and leave, the mate bond roared in protest inside me. Ravina had cleverly manipulated the situation. Zhayad thought he'd killed his own pack mates for nothing, and it was the kind of pain that turned Alphas to raging beasts.
I forgot entirely about the bath and decided to chase after Zhayad. Perhaps if I could summon the vial back and ask him to run DNA tests on it for fingerprints, I would be able to show him the truth.
I went to the door to pull it open, but right then I heard the lock twist. Wait, what? Someone was on the other side of the door, someone who wasn't Zhayad.
“Unlock the door, Ravina,” I said, my voice trembling but loud enough to carry through the thick wood. “I know you’re trying to sabotage me. I’ve done nothing to you, nothing! But you hate me with a passion that’s eating you alive.”
A low, mocking chuckle filtered through the door.
Ravina’s voice was calm, almost conversational, as though we were discussing tea instead of my impending erasure.
“Oh, shut up, witch. When I selected you that night in the Maiden line,” she continued, her tone dripping with venomous regret, “I had no idea what you truly were. A wolfless abomination. A warlock’s spawn wrapped in soft curves and fake innocence. Sending you into the woods to bewitch our Alpha was my greatest mistake.”
I pressed my forehead against the cool wood, listening to her vomit the poison she'd been carrying in her heart for so long.
“I’m going to correct it,” she said softly. “By erasing you completely.”