The Night My Mate Chose Her Again

I threw up after the mirror cracked.

Not elegantly.

Not like a tragic Luna in a moonlit ballad.

I bent over the iron basin while Sera held my hair back and blood soaked through the fresh bandage under my ribs. My stomach had nothing left in it but bitter tea and panic, so mostly I shook until my teeth hurt.

Behind me, Dacre said nothing.

That helped.

If he had tried to comfort me, I might have hated him for sounding too much like someone who had never lost a face.

Sera pressed a cold cloth to the back of my neck. "Breathe through your nose."

"I am trying not to die in your basin."

"Ambitious. Start smaller."

A laugh scraped out of me.

It hurt.

Everything hurt.

My side. My throat. My knees from Moonridge stone. My cheek where the false Liora had touched me with my own hand. I could still feel her fingers there, soft and dry, as if she had left a print under my skin.

I wiped my mouth with the cloth and looked at the cracked mirror on the table.

The split down the glass ran straight through my face.

One half looked almost like me.

The other half blurred if I stared too hard.

"Cover it," I said.

Sera did.

No one called me weak.

That helped too.

Dacre stood near the window, rain turning the glass black behind him. "Moonridge will try to finish the rite before dawn."

My stomach turned again.

"Kael would not."

The words came out before I could stop them.

I hated myself immediately.

Dacre looked at me.

Not cruelly.

Worse.

Like he had heard exactly how much of me still wanted to be wrong.

"You want him to stop it," he said.

"I want him to know me."

There.

Small. Pathetic. True.

Sera's hands stilled in my hair.

I stared at the covered mirror because looking at either of them was too much.

"I want him to walk into that room, look at her, and feel sick. I want him to tear my combs out of her hair. I want him to ask where I am. I want him to come for me."

My voice cracked.

"I know he won't."

No one corrected me.

Their silence told me they believed it too.

Hope did not die all at once.

It embarrassed itself first.

A bell rang downstairs.

Once.

Then again.

Sera's face changed. "Moon-basin echo."

"What is that?"

Dacre was already moving. "A public rite call. Moonridge wants every allied witness to hear the confirmation."

The room went cold.

"Here?" I asked.

"Ironwood is listed as hostile witness now. They want me to hear it."

He opened the door.

I followed before Sera could stop me.

The stairs blurred under my feet. I nearly fell once. Dacre did not catch me. He slowed by one step until I caught the railing.

Good.

I did not want to be carried when Moonridge was about to prove how easily I could be replaced.

The lower hall had filled with Ironwood wolves. No one spoke. At the center of the stone floor, a black bowl of water shook on a stand.

Silver light rose from it.

Then Kael's voice filled the hall.

"Before moon and pack, I stand with Liora Venn, chosen mate and Luna of Moonridge."

My knees almost gave.

Not because he said my name.

Because he said it to her.

A woman's hand appeared above the water, pale and perfect, resting in his.

My ring sat on her finger.

I had forgotten the ring.

How stupid was that?

They had my face, my gown, my combs, my childhood toy, and somehow the sight of my ring on her hand made the room tilt harder than all of it.

I stepped closer to the bowl.

Sera caught my sleeve. "Don't touch the water."

Kael's voice continued.

"I claim her in body, bond, and name."

The mate bond inside me twisted.

I made a sound I would have denied if anyone asked.

The woman in the water laughed softly.

My laugh.

Then Mira's face formed above the bowl.

She looked beautiful.

Rested.

Clean.

My pearl combs shone in her hair. Someone had repaired the silver gown where blood had stained it. The stolen crescent at her throat was hidden under lace.

She looked like a Luna.

I looked like a wound nobody wanted to dress.

Mira turned her head as if she could see me through the echo.

"Poor thing," she said.

The same words she had used in the hall.

This time no one gasped.

No one cheered.

Only Ironwood heard.

Maybe that made it worse.

"Kael," I whispered.

In the water, his hand tightened around hers.

Not mine.

Hers.

The moon-basin flared.

Silver light climbed Mira's throat. The hidden mark bled through the lace for one second, dark and angry.

Kael did not step away.

He wrapped his arm around her waist and held her steady.

My wolf howled so hard my vision went white.

Dacre's voice cut through the sound.

"Look."

"No."

"Look, Liora."

I hated him then.

I looked anyway.

Kael bent his head.

He kissed the bleeding mark on Mira's throat.

The hall vanished.

For a few seconds there was only that image. His mouth on the place where my life had been stolen. His hand on her waist. Her eyes open over his shoulder, staring straight through the water at me.

Mira smiled.

Not sweet now.

Mine had never looked like that.

"He chose," she mouthed.

Two words.

Cleaner than a blade.

The echo snapped off.

The black water went still.

No one breathed loudly enough to be heard.

I did not cry.

That felt important.

I walked to the bowl, picked it up with both hands, and smashed it against the stone floor.

Water spread over my boots.

No silver. No moonlight.

Just water.

Just me shaking in a room full of enemy wolves while my mate finished giving my life to another woman.

Sera said my name quietly.

I looked at Dacre.

"You said Ironwood begins with refusal."

His eyes sharpened.

"Yes."

"Teach me."

He did not smile.

Good.

If he had looked pleased, I might have broken the nearest thing I could lift.

Instead he looked at the shattered bowl, then at my face.

"At dawn," he said, "I bring knives."

For once, no one asked me to endure.

They offered me a way to answer.