All the color left Sabrina’s face.
"What —" She looked from the Alpha to Nina, her mouth still open, the smile completely gone. "Alpha..." Her eyes dropped to the crown on Nina’s head, the dread spreading slow across her face.
Nina’s mouth hung open as she stared at him.
He held her gaze once, then turned to the guards.
"Escort that woman out of the hall," he said, his voice carrying clean through the shrine.
Two guards were already moving.
"No —" Sabrina’s voice cracked as hands closed around her arms, pulling her back down the aisle. "No, you can’t — What are you doing? I am the real —" Her voice rose into sothing cracked and breaking. "She is the liar. She is a servant child. She is not —"
The doors shut behind her and the hall went still.
Nina stood at the altar with the crown on her head and her heart sowhere in her throat, about a hundred people staring at her and nobody making a sound. Her eyes had not left him. He did not look surprised, not even slightly, and she turned slowly to find her parents in the crowd. Her father’s face had gone white. Marjorie stood beside him with her eyes fixed on the ground. Nina’s gaze moved to the Matriarch next.
The woman didn’t look surprised either.
The high priestess stepped forward and took their hands and joined them together, Rodrigo’s fingers wrapping slowly around hers, and then she turned to face the crowd.
"Before you is Alpha Rodrigo Vermont and Luna Nina Vermont of Vermont Pack. May your reign never end."
The crowd rose and bowed, their voices joining.
"Long live the Alpha."
"Long live the Luna."
"Long live the Pack of Vermont."
Nina searched his face for sothing — a crack, anything that could tell her what he was thinking — but there was none.
Her throat tightened and she looked away first, her fingers squeezing around his without aning to. The crowd clapped and cheered and Nina forced a smile to her face, her palms sweating.
She didn’t realize she was still holding onto him until he shifted. Nina quickly let go, rubbing her hands together.
"I..." she started, her lips moving.
"You will talk, but first, we finish this," he said quietly.
Whatever she had been about to say died on her tongue. She gulped, nodding faintly.
He took her hand in his again and turned to the crowd, greeting the nobles.
They moved through the nobles one after the other as they greeted them. None made ntion of the intrusion, as though it had not happened.
Nina held a smile to her face, but her mind was a ss.
When did he find out? When did he start suspecting her?
She couldn’t risk him suspecting her now. If he continued digging into her, she wasn’t sure what he would find.
They stopped in front of her parents and Nina’s smile died.
Her eyes moved from her father to her stepmother and rested there.
Marjorie avoided her eyes. All the condescending glare she had given her — gone.
Jonathan spoke first, his voice careful and asured.
"Congratulations, Alpha and Luna. May your reign be long."
Her eyes drifted to him. He didn’t look back, his gaze fixed sowhere near the floor. Beside him, Marjorie stood with her hands folded tightly in front of her, her face the color of ash.
Rodrigo looked at them both and said nothing for a long mont — long enough that Jonathan’s shoulders began to draw in. Then he turned to the guard at his side.
"Please take them to the pack house and make them comfortable," he said, his eyes cutting back to her parents. He tilted his head slightly. "We have a lot to discuss, don’t we."
It wasn’t a question.
"Yes," Jonathan managed, his whole body stiff. "Yes... yes, we do."
Rodrigo turned without answering and moved to the next noble. Nina followed beside him, her hand in his. She didn’t look back.
She could feel it coming off him — in the stillness of his shoulders and the set of his jaw.
He was furious.
Nina sat with her hands folded in her lap, her back straight, her eyes forward.
Rodrigo sat beside her, still, his expression giving nothing away.
Across the parlor, Jonathan sat beside his wife, their eyes pinned to the ground.
Marjorie had not looked at her since she ca in. Her knuckles were white on her lap.
And beside her — Sabrina.
Nina glanced at her.
Her hair was pulled in three different directions, pins hanging loose, whole sections coming undone. Her makeup had run under both eyes and dried there. The blue dress that had been so deliberate this morning was creased across the skirt where the guards had held her.
Her eyes were red and swollen and fixed on the floor with the stunned, disbelieving expression of soone who had run full speed into a wall and was still trying to understand where it had co from.
Sothing bubbled up in Nina’s throat.
She pressed her lips together and looked away.
Rodrigo had not said anything for the past thirty minutes. His eyes were shut, his head leaning on his hand, as though thinking.
Nina’s eyes wandered.
She didn’t know how angry he was, but at least she was sure he still wanted her as Luna.
That was a win.
Now she only had to make him trust her.
Footsteps approached the door and Nina turned toward it.
The Matriarch walked in. She stood by the doors for a few seconds, her eyes moving over each of them, before she crossed the room and sat down on an empty couch, placing her staff beside her.
Jonathan was on his knees before she had finished sitting down.
"Your Grace, I am deeply sorry for this." His voice ca out low and strained. He reached for Marjorie’s arm and pulled her down beside him. "We never intended to deceive the pack. We only — our younger daughter, she was frightened. We thought if Nina went in her place —" He stopped. Swallowed. "We only wanted to protect our daughter."
The Matriarch set her staff against the arm of the chair.
She looked at Jonathan for a long mont. Then at Marjorie.
"It is one thing," she said, "to try to deceive this pack. That alone is a serious matter." She paused. "It is an entirely different thing to send a child to her death in your daughter’s place — and then, when that child survives — to co here and try to take it back because it has beco rosy."
She let that sit in the room.
"How vile."
User Comments
0 comments from readers