Chapter 5 PACK POLITICS

The Council Chambers smelled like dust, cedar, and control.

I had only been inside them once before, during healer training, when the Elders walked us through the political structure of the pack. Back then, I had sat quietly at the back, jotting notes and pretending not to notice how few people even looked my way.

I remembered being awed by the crescent windows, the high stone walls carved with the history of our bloodlines, and the enormous table where every major decision about our lives was made.

Now, five days after my public rejection, I stood near that same table. But there was no awe. Only the bitter taste of humiliation still lingered on my tongue.

They had summoned the pack to observe. Not all, just enough to legitimize what they were about to do.

I knew why I was here.

This was theater.

A carefully staged performance meant to clean up the mess the Alpha had made when he walked away from me under the Harvest Moon.

I kept to the edge of the room, near one of the cold pillars, trying to look smaller than I felt. I had not been announced. No one acknowledged my presence, but I had felt the pull the moment Kael arrived. The bond still hummed low and unwanted in my chest. Faint but alive.

The Elders sat in their high-backed chairs, each one draped in the ceremonial furs of their station. Elder Varek sat at the head, his lips pressed into the familiar sneer he wore anytime he looked in my direction. Beside him sat Elder Rhian, who rarely spoke but always watched, and the others, lined like statues waiting for permission to breathe.

Kael entered in full Alpha form, cloaked in the deep crimson reserved for formal announcements. His posture was impeccable. His expression was unreadable. He moved with the authority of someone who believed power belonged to him by right.

Trailing behind him was a woman I had only seen once from a distance. She moved with deliberate grace, her chin high, her eyes sharp. She wore gold silk embroidered with the Bloodmoon crest, even though she was not one of us. Her hair shimmered like moonlight, and her steps fell soft and exact.

Luna Amaris.

I recognized her from the stories. Royal-born. Daughter of the Eastfang Alpha. Groomed since childhood to be mated for influence.

She did not glance my way, but I felt the heat of her smirk as if she had.

Kael stood before the table, voice clear and firm.

"As Alpha of the Bloodmoon Pack, I present my intention to claim a mate, one who will help solidify our standing among the high packs. Luna Amaris of Eastfang has accepted."

The words landed like stones across my chest. I had known they were coming, but nothing prepares you for betrayal twice in the same breath.

There was a pause, ceremonial and intentional, before Elder Varek rose to his feet.

"The Council acknowledges this choice. We approve the bond and recognize Luna Amaris as the Alpha's intended. Her royal bloodline will strengthen our alliances and secure the next generation of leadership."

He looked around the room, daring anyone to speak.

No one did.

I expected murmurs. Protests. At least a few faces twisted in confusion. But the crowd stayed quiet, not because they agreed, but because no one had ever told them how to oppose an Alpha without being punished for it.

Kael did not glance at me once.

He did not have to.

My humiliation was complete.

I felt it in every breath drawn carefully by the Elders, in the way the pack avoided my gaze, in the quiet sound of Amaris's shoes as she turned toward the head of the table and took her place beside him.

I backed away slowly, pressing myself deeper into the shadow of the column.

But just as I turned to leave, a pair of hands closed around my arms.

Two guards.

"Come with us," one of them said.

I stiffened. "Why?"

"Alpha's orders," the second one replied, not unkindly, but not kindly either. "For your safety."

My safety.

That was the word they always used when they meant something else.

I glanced toward Kael, but he had already turned back to the table, speaking in low tones to Elder Rhian. He did not even pretend to notice what was happening.

I was dragged from the chamber without resistance. My legs moved, but it felt like my spirit had gone somewhere else, as if it had slipped beneath the floorboards just to escape the weight pressing down on me.

They did not take me back to the Healers' Hall.

They led me down a narrow stone stairwell tucked behind the eastern wing of the packhouse. The air grew colder the farther we descended, and the torches flickered low against walls lined with rusted hooks and broken tiles.

The holding cells.

I had only seen them once, when an omega had stolen bread during a famine year. I remembered how her hands shook when she was brought out. How she would not speak for weeks.

The guards opened a cell near the end of the corridor. The metal door groaned on its hinges, and the scent of mildew greeted me like an old memory.

"Inside," the first one said.

I turned to look at him, confused.

"What could possibly threaten my safety in a pack that just watched me be replaced like a broken chair?"

He didn't answer.

He just locked the door behind me.

The cell was barely wide enough to stretch out in. There was a cot in one corner and a cracked bowl of water in the other. The walls were damp. The air smelled of old blood and worse secrets.

I sat down on the floor because the cot looked like it hadn't been cleaned in years.

My hands trembled slightly as the silence settled over me, but I willed them to stillness.

I had endured worse.

Or maybe I hadn't, and I was just trying to believe that because there was nothing else to do.

I pressed my back against the wall and stared at the small barred window where the moonlight tried to reach through.

Somewhere above, Kael was likely raising a glass with the Elders, sealing alliances and plotting the next chapter of his legacy. And the girl he had chosen sat beside him, radiant and righteous in the power she had inherited without effort.

I was the girl no one defended.

The one the Moon chose and the pack erased.

But something strange happened in that cell.

I did not cry.

Not that it didn't hurt. It did. Every part of me ached from the shame of being dragged out of a room where my life had just been rewritten without my voice.

I did not cry because somewhere inside the pit of that silence, something had started to pulse.

A low hum.

Not pain. Not quite anger.

Something else.

The fire.

It stirred beneath my ribs, slow and coiled, patient like a predator that had been waiting for the right season to rise.

I placed my palm against the wall.

The stone warmed slightly beneath my skin.

I should have been afraid, but I wasn't. I should have been broken, but I wasn't. Not yet.

Because deep inside the hurt, past the rejection and the chains of silence, a voice had started to whisper.

Not the Moon's.

Mine.