Chapter 24 024

Chapter 24 024

Zelyne's POV

Aliya announced the gathering three days before it happened.

Pack dinner, she called it. Casual. Just the community coming together in the way packs did, sharing food, marking the new Alpha's first month. Nothing formal, nothing to prepare for.

I knew better than that by now.

.....

Petra helped me dress.

Not the maids Aliya sent — I'd thanked them and sent them away and Petra had come in with a look on her face that said she understood exactly why and we didn't talk about it. She did my hair simply, the way I liked it, and handed me the dark blue dress that was mine, that I'd chosen, not anything that had been laid out for me.

Small things. They mattered.

"She'll try to seat you away from him," Petra said while she worked. Quiet, just for the room.

"I know."

"And she'll introduce you to certain people and not others. The ones she introduces you to — they're hers. The ones she steers you away from are worth remembering."

I looked at her in the mirror. "How do you know all of this."

"Four years," she said simply. "You watch long enough you learn the patterns."

I nodded.

"Stay close to Dominic when you can," she said. "Not obviously. Just — close."

She finished and stepped back and I looked at myself in the mirror for a moment.

Blue dress. Hair back. Face ready.

Let's go, I thought.

\---

The courtyard had been set with long tables and torches and the whole pack was there — families, soldiers, the older ones, children running between legs until someone caught them and made them sit. It looked warm and easy and completely ordinary and I walked into it knowing it was none of those things, at least not tonight, at least not for me.

Aliya was already there.

She was moving through the crowd the way she always moved — graceful, unhurried, a word for everyone, her hand on an arm here, a smile there. Watching her work was like watching someone play an instrument they'd been playing for thirty years. Every movement placed. Every contact deliberate.

She saw me come in.

Smiled. Moved toward me.

"Zelyne." Both hands taking mine, warm, the picture of a mother-in-law welcoming her son's wife. "You look beautiful. Come, there are people I want you to meet."

And just like that I was moving through the crowd on her arm.

\---

She introduced me to eight people in the first twenty minutes.

I paid attention to every one. Not to what they said — the words were all surface, all pleasantries, none of it mattering — but to who they were. The elder who smiled too much and agreed with everything Aliya said before she'd finished saying it. The soldier's wife who asked me careful questions about where I was from and what my father did, the kind of questions that were really just data collection dressed up as small talk. The older woman who kept looking at Aliya while she was supposedly talking to me.

Hers. All of them. Every single one.

I was warm and polite and gave them nothing useful and moved on.

Dominic was on the other side of the courtyard.

I'd clocked him the moment I came in — you always knew where he was, something in the air changed slightly around him, some quality of attention that the room gave him without being asked to. He was with the pack elders, doing the thing he did at these events, the serious steady work of being Alpha in public. Not comfortable but capable. There's a difference.

He caught my eye once across the crowd.

Half a second. Then he looked back at the elder he was talking to.

I looked back at Aliya's next introduction.

\---

She sat me at the table between the elder who agreed with everything and a young soldier I'd never spoken to who looked terrified to be next to me and spent the whole dinner looking at his plate.

Dominic was four seats away.

Aliya between us. Of course.

I ate and talked and laughed at the right moments and asked the right questions and was the picture of a Luna settling into her role and the whole time I was watching everything. Who spoke to whom. Who looked at Aliya before answering a question. Who avoided my eyes and who didn't. Who was performing tonight the same way I was and who was just genuinely having dinner with their pack.

Kael was across the table and down a few seats and he caught my eye at one point during the meal and something passed between us — just acknowledgment, just I see what's happening here and so do you — and then we both looked away and kept eating.

Aliya gave a small speech.

About Dominic, about the pack, about the future. Warm words, well chosen, the kind that made people feel good and said nothing specific. She mentioned me once — our new Luna, still finding her feet, what a gift she's been to this family — and I smiled exactly the right amount and dipped my head exactly the right amount and felt her eyes on me while I did it checking the smile for something real.

I gave her nothing real.

Just the smile.

Just the dipped head.

Just the performance of a girl who was grateful and settling in and no threat to anything.

\---

After the food the tables moved back and people spread out and the evening loosened into something more informal.

I excused myself from the elder and moved through the crowd and found a quieter spot near the far wall and stood there for a moment just breathing.

"You're exhausted."

Dominic. Beside me, appearing from somewhere, a cup in his hand, looking out at the crowd rather than at me.

"I'm fine," I said.

"You've been performing for three hours."

I looked at him sideways.

He was still watching the crowd. Jaw set, expression flat, but there was something in the way he'd said it — not critical, not cold. Just accurate. Like he'd been watching and he knew what he'd seen.

"So have you," I said.

Something shifted in his face. Almost. "Yes," he said.

We stood there for a moment side by side against the wall watching Aliya move through her pack like water through a riverbed, finding every gap, filling every space.

"She's good at this," I said quietly.

He didn't answer straight away.

"Yes," he said. And something in that one word was different from all the other times he'd agreed with something I'd said. Something slightly heavier. Like he was agreeing with more than what I'd actually said.

I didn't push it.

We stood there another minute and then he moved back into the crowd because that was what was needed and I watched him go and then looked back at Aliya who was laughing at something someone had said.

Her eyes found me over the shoulder of the person she was laughing with.

Held for a second.

Smile still in place.

I smiled back.

Looked away first.

Went back into the crowd and finished the evening and said the right things to the right people and when it was finally done and the pack was dispersing and the torches were burning low I walked back inside and up to the room and sat on the bed and let my face do whatever it wanted for the first time in four hours.

My wolf moved in my chest. Restless and warm and slightly angry on my behalf.

I pressed my hand to my sternum.