Elara’s POV

I couldn’t breathe.

The silence pressed in from every direction—heavier than sound, heavier than the golden lantern light, heavier than the hundreds of glowing eyes now fixed on the empty space where my aura should have been.

Your nanny.

The words hung in the air like smoke. Sylvia’s hand was still raised, still gesturing toward me as if I were an exhibit behind glass. Her expression had shifted from bewilderment to something almost apologetic, but the damage was already done. The word had been spoken. The judgment had been passed.

I could feel Kaelen’s arm tighten around my waist. Could feel the low vibration of a growl building in his chest—the kind that preceded something dangerous. Something imperial.

"Kaelen," I whispered. My voice came out thin. Raspy. "Don’t."

His jaw was locked. A vein pulsed at his temple. "Ela," he began, his voice a low, protective rumble.

"Don’t," I repeated. I pressed my hand against his chest—not to comfort him this time, but to push. Gently. Firmly. "I need air. Just—let me go."

His dark gold eyes burned into mine. I could read the war behind them. Every instinct he possessed was screaming at him to shield me. To make them all kneel. To turn this beautiful hall into a courtroom and Sylvia into the accused.

But I couldn’t stand here. Not for another second. Not with every supernatural sense in the room reaching toward me and finding nothing. Not with the whispers already starting again, rustling through the crowd like wind through dead leaves.

"Please," I said.

His hand loosened. Slowly. Like releasing something precious over the edge of a cliff.

I turned and walked.

Not ran. Walked. Spine straight. Chin level. The way I’d taught myself during those years of being invisible in Baron Valois’s household—move with purpose and no one questions you. Move with purpose and maybe you’ll fool them into thinking you have somewhere to be.

The crowd parted. Not for me. For the absence of me. They stepped aside the way you’d step around a puddle on the street—unconsciously, without acknowledgment.

I made it through the arched doorway. Down a short corridor lined with tapestries depicting ancient battles between wolves and monsters. Past two guards who straightened at the sight of me, then relaxed when their senses registered nothing worth standing for.

The terrace doors were open.

Cold night air hit my face like a mercy. I stepped out onto the stone balcony and gripped the railing with both hands, knuckles white, lungs burning.

Below, the palace gardens stretched into darkness—hedgerows and fountains and pathways that I could barely see. Above, the moon hung fat and silver. Beautiful. Indifferent.

Moonlight.

The name came unbidden. My wolf. My lost wolf. The part of me that had once hummed beneath my skin like a second heartbeat, that had made my eyes flash silver when I was angry, that had let me heal wounds with a touch and sense danger before it arrived.

Gone.

Torn away when Lyra was born. As though my body had made a choice I never agreed to—pour everything into the child, leave nothing for the mother. And now I was this. A hollow vessel. A woman standing on a terrace during Riley’s engagement party with absolutely nothing supernatural about her.

I stared at my reflection in the dark glass of the terrace doors. The sea-blue dress that Brenna had chosen with such care. The hair already falling loose from its careful twist. The face that looked tired and too thin and utterly, devastatingly ordinary.

Your nanny.

Of course Sylvia had thought that. Why wouldn’t she? I carried no scent-bond. No aura. No power signature. I was a blank space standing next to the most powerful Alpha in the Empire. The logical conclusion wasn’t mate. The logical conclusion was servant.

And the worst part—the part that made my throat close and my eyes sting—was that she wasn’t entirely wrong.

What was I, if not someone who served? I cooked for my children. I cleaned for them. I organized their days and soothed their nightmares and changed Lyra’s wrappings. I was excellent at those things. Necessary. Functional.

But I wasn’t equal.

Not anymore.

A sound behind me. Footsteps—quick, unsteady, the click of shoes on wet stone.

"Pardon me, Madam—coming through—"

I turned just in time to see the young waiter. He was barely more than a boy, really. Thin arms. Nervous eyes. He carried a silver tray holding twelve crystal flutes—delicate, beautiful, catching moonlight in their facets. He must have been bringing them from the kitchen through the terrace shortcut.

His left foot hit a wet flagstone.

Everything happened at once.

The tray tilted. His body lurched forward. The crystal flutes slid with a sound like wind chimes in a hurricane—a cascading, musical catastrophe. His shoulder collided with mine as he pitched sideways.

Once, I would have caught him. Once, my reflexes would have fired before my brain even registered the danger. I would have moved like water, like instinct, like the wolf I used to be.

Instead, I went down.

My heels skidded on the champagne-slicked stone. My hip hit the railing. Then the ground rushed up and I was on the flagstones, dress soaked through with cold champagne, surrounded by the glittering wreckage of shattered crystal.

Pain—sharp and immediate—bloomed in my right palm. I looked down. A shard of glass was embedded in the flesh below my thumb, blood welling up dark and red around its edges. Two more cuts scored my left hand. The champagne burned in the open wounds.

"Madam, I am so terribly sorry!" The waiter was on his knees beside me, face white with horror. His hands hovered uselessly, afraid to touch me, afraid to make it worse. "Please—I didn’t see—the stones were wet and I—"

"It’s fine," I managed. My voice sounded far away. "I’m fine."

I wasn’t fine. The back of my dress was soaked. Glass crunched beneath my palms as I tried to push myself up and failed. Blood dripped onto pale stone. The cuts weren’t deep, but they wouldn’t stop bleeding—because there was no wolf healing to seal them. No supernatural recovery. Just ordinary flesh doing what ordinary flesh did.

Bleeding. Slowly. Helplessly.

"What on earth—"

The crowd arrived like a tide. Guests spilled through the terrace doorway, drawn by the crash. Dozens of them. Glowing eyes. Sharp senses. They took in the scene—the shattered crystal, the champagne-soaked woman on the ground, the panicking waiter—and I watched their expressions cycle through surprise, confusion, and then that particular species of recognition that felt like being stripped naked.

Sylvia pushed through to the front.

"You—" She turned on the waiter with a fury that seemed almost rehearsed, her voice pitched to carry. "Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Do you know who this woman is?"

The waiter flinched. "I—no, Madam, I—"

"This," Sylvia announced, turning to face the gathered crowd with one hand pressed dramatically over her heart, "is the Emperor’s mate."

A ripple passed through the audience. Gasps. Murmurs. The word mate landed differently now—not as a title, but as an impossibility.

"Kaelen’s own bonded companion," Sylvia continued. Her voice dripped with something designed to sound like sympathy. "And as you can all see—" She paused. Gestured toward me on the ground. Toward the blood on my hands. Toward the glass I couldn’t heal. "—she is mortal now. No wolf-spirit. No healing. Nothing."

The whispers erupted.

"—completely human—"

"—lost her wolf? How is that possible—"

"—and she carries his children? Those pups will be—"

"—tainted. Half-blood. Diluted—"

"—the royal bloodline, mixed with mortal stock—"

"—filthy half-breeds, that’s what they’ll be—"

Each word was a stone. Thrown casually. Precisely. I stopped trying to get up.

Sylvia knelt beside me. Close. Intimate. Her emerald gown pooled on the wet stone without a care. She tucked a strand of loose hair behind my ear with fingers that felt like ice.

"Oh, you poor thing," she murmured. But the murmur was loud. Projected. Meant for every ear on that terrace. "Trying so hard to raise those half-blood children on your own, without even the strength to protect them." Her eyes met mine—cold, glittering, satisfied. "How incredibly brave. And how terribly, terribly sad."