Chapter 34 Luna In Isolation
Aurelia
Zhayad looked at me like I was a stranger wearing my face.
The green fire in his eyes had cooled to ash, dull, distant, and wounded. He stared at the syrup he'd smashed between his fingers, then at me, and something cracked behind his gaze.
I saw it happen, the moment he started to believe Ravina.
“I swear by our mate bond,” I said, my voice shaking, my words tumbling over each other, “I wasn’t trying to poison you. Ravina and Irina, they wanted to poison me. To block my womb. I overheard them in the storage room. Three drops, every meal. They said it would make sure nothing ever grew inside me.”
He just watched me, silent, and the silence was worse than any shout.
“She’s lying, Alpha.” Ravina protested. “The syrup was meant for you. They wanted to make sure you could never father pups with her. They wanted your line to die with you. Irina tried to stop her, but the Luna attacked her with her magic.”
Zhayad shut his eyes, then opened it. He believed her..I saw it settle over him like frost. The mate bond thrummed between us, frantic, pleading, but his side of it had gone cold, armored, and locked away.
He stepped back, just one step, but it felt like a continent opening between us.
“You will be isolated,” he said in an emotionless voice, “until you come to your senses.”
“Zhayad—please—”
He turned away, not dramatically or angrily. He just turned, his shoulders rigid as he walked away.
The last thing I saw before I was being escorted back to the isolation quarters was Ravina lifting her tear-streaked face to watch me go, her lips curving in the smallest cruelest smile.
As the door locked behind me, I tried not to shed tears. With the floor to ceiling windows overlooking the forest ahead and iron bars disguised as decorative lattices, there was no escaping this place.
I stared at the wide bed draped in silver furs, the fireplace that looked like it'd never been lit, the single chair and small table and broke into tears. I couldn't stop them from falling.
I wept the first night until I lost my voice. I threw myself against the bars until my shoulders bruised, but no one came.
The mark of the moon goddess still glowed on my chest every now and then, but it felt like a brand of something nobody believed in.
Ravina had won.
The pack laughed at me in whispers that drifted up from the courtyard below. They usually converged there to gossip and mock me.
I never imagined that things would take this kind of turn. All because I'd been trying to defend myself.
The whispers called me the Luna who tried to poison her mate. The warlock’s daughter who finally showed her true colors.
On the fifth day of isolation, the door opened for the first time.
Two shifter-guards stood there, stone-faced, and armed.
“You’re allowed twenty minutes outside,” one said flatly. “Supervised. Don’t try anything stupid.” He narrowed his eyes, as if he knew I was considering it.
Twenty minutes? Like I was a dog being let out to piss. I stood slowly, my legs shaky from disuse.
At least they hadn't cuffed me. They didn’t need to. The whole pack knew I had nowhere to run.
They marched me down the spiral stairs, past windows that showed glimpses of the training grounds, wolves moving in the distance like shadows.
Everywhere I looked I saw eyes trailing me, watching, judging, and hating.
We reached the inner courtyard where the air hit me like a slap. I hadn’t smelled fresh air in days.
They stopped at the stone archway.
“Twenty minutes,” the guard repeated. “Stay in sight.”
I stepped forward alone. The courtyard was empty except for me and the two guards at the arch.
Frost still clung to the grass.
A stone bench sat under a bare oak. I walked toward it on unsteady legs, my arms wrapped around myself against the cold.
Halfway there I stopped, because Ravina was waiting.
She stood beneath the oak, her face calm and lovely as if nothing had happened. As if her daughter hadn’t tried to rip me apart. As if she hadn’t tried to sterilize me.
“Hello, Luna,” she flashed me a wolfish grin.
“Enjoying your walk?”
My hands curled into fists. She stepped closer with graceful, unafraid steps.
“I told you,” she murmured, “you would never carry his pups. I told you the pack would never accept you. And I told you… I always win.”
She leaned in, her voice dropping to a whisper only I could hear.
“But don’t worry. When he finally casts you aside, Irina will be there to comfort him. And when he puts her, the real Luna, in his bed, I’ll make sure she gives him the heirs you never could.”
But as she was speaking, a shifter-guard came to tell me my twenty minutes was up.
It wasn't true, I knew. They simply wanted to treat me unfairly. Halfway up the spiral stairs, laughter drifted from the far wing of the pack house. Irina’s laughter.
I slowed without meaning to. The guard shoved my shoulder.
“Move.”
I twisted just enough to see through the arched window on the landing. There they were. Zhayad and Irina, stepping in through the grand double doors like they’d just returned from a ball.
She was flushed, her eyes glassy, the gown she wore shimmering as she moved. She swayed, deliberately or drunkenly, I couldn’t tell, and leaned heavily into him.
Her hand caught his, guided it firmly around her waist. He didn’t resist or pull away.
My chest caved.
Aggressive hands shoved my shoulders again, harder this time.
I lurched forward, caught the railing before I fell, my nails scraping stone.
Irina’s head tilted back against his shoulder.
She laughed again and said something to him.
Zhayad’s mouth curved, just a flicker, before he murmured something back.
The guard dragged me the rest of the way up, and they locked the door behind me before I could even make it three steps inside.
I stood in the center of the room, my chest heaving, my vision blurring, and felt something inside me fracture.
Irina was worming her way into his heart. I saw it, the way he let her lean on him.
The way he didn’t flinch when she came close. The way his mouth softened, just for a second, when she laughed.
How long would they keep me here? Weeks? Months? Long enough for the pack to crown her Luna in my place?
I sank to the floor beside the window, my knees drawn up, arms wrapped around myself. I stared at the glass windows until my eyes burned and exhaustion finally dragged me under.
I passed out right there on the cold stone, too hollowed out to crawl to the bed.
When I woke up, I wasn’t on the floor. I was in bed.