RYKER

She wasn’t in the ivory dress anymore. They’d put her in a long and floral with a pale veil draped across her shoulders, the attires they wrapped Luna’s in for ceremonies like this one, and every single person in that room rose to their feet, including Rowan, including me, before my brain had caught up to what my body was doing.

"Long live Luna Amaris."

The room chorused it. Close to thirty voices at once, flat and dutiful in the dead of night.

Rowan and I did not say it. We were on our feet but the words wouldn’t come, because we were both looking at her. Our mate. Standing in a floral dress with a veil on her shoulders, walking into a boardroom as someone else’s wife. Our father’s wife. Which, going by the law that had been read over the two of them tonight, made her our stepmother.

I let that thought land all the way down and it was exactly as screwed up as it sounded, and worse for the part of me that still wanted to cross the room and take her out of it.

Marco crossed to her and guided her toward the raised seat near the podium, and she went without lifting her head once. Not at the nobles. Not at the council. Not at us.

Rowan dropped back into his chair beside me and leaned in close.

"Do you think she’s happy?"

"I don’t fucking care." I kept my eyes off her with everything I had. "She’s dead to me for all I care."

Rowan let out a quiet laugh that had no humour in it. "Funny. A few days ago you cared enough to be in her bed."

My head turned fast and I scanned the people nearest us to make sure no ears had pointed our way. The nobles were murmuring among themselves. Marco was at the podium. The elders were half asleep. Nobody had caught it.

"I asked her not to get mated to him," I muttered, low enough that only he could hear it.

Rowan’s face went blank with confusion. "You asked her what."

I didn’t repeat it.

"Weren’t you the one all about ruining her." He kept his voice down but his eyes had gone wide and disbelieving. "Using her to get to Father. Making him bleed for what he did. When exactly did you change your mind on all of that."

I looked over at Amaris.

She was staring down at her own lap, hands folded in the floral fabric, not lifting her eyes to a single soul in the room, which was the smart move because every soul in the room was staring at her. Studying her. Judging her. Her own brother had stood up and disgraced her in front of the entire pack a few hours ago and now she had to sit at the front of a room full of people who had watched it happen and say nothing.

I would deal with Darius. That lying piece of shit was already on my list and I would get to him in time, take it out of his hide slowly.

But first I needed to know why she’d agreed to it. Why she’d stood up on that platform and confirmed what Darius said when a single word the other way might have stopped the whole thing dead.

"Ever since Jason told us she was targeted for her bloodline," I said quietly, watching her, "for her blood to mix with his and make a strong heir, I keep thinking about how she got shoved into all of this. She never had a choice in any of it. She deserves better than the cycle he’s forcing her into."

Rowan rolled his eyes. "Bullshit. You want her for yourself. You got a taste and now you can’t stomach the thought of anyone else having her, least of all him."

"So you don’t?" I turned on him fully. "Or is that exactly why you’re suddenly calling off your wedding to Lila the same night he mates her?"

Rowan’s mouth opened, something hot already forming behind his teeth.

Before he could get it out, Marco stood up at the podium and the whole room shifted toward him.

"The Alpha will be here shortly," Marco announced, his voice carrying over the murmurs. "I ask that everyone remain seated and maintain order."

A pair of sentinels crossed the room and took up positions directly behind mine and Rowan’s chairs. Close. Too close.

I turned and looked up at the one nearest me. "Why are you hovering over us?"

He didn’t answer. Stared straight ahead like I hadn’t said a word, hands clasped in front of him, jaw set.

I looked at Rowan. Rowan looked at the sentinel, then at the second one, then back at me, and I watched the exact thought move through him that was already moving through me. There was no good reason for two sentinels to be posted at our backs in our own father’s boardroom. None at all. Unless he expected us to do something. Unless he knew something was coming that he didn’t want us getting up for.

My pulse picked up under the whiskey.

The door opened.

My father walked in.

He was not alone. He had a woman with him, one arm wrapped around her, half holding her upright and half holding her against his side, and she was thinner than I remembered and there were scars running up her arms that hadn’t been there before and her hair was longer than it used to be, but I would have known that face anywhere on this earth. I had spent a year telling myself I would never see it again. I had buried it in the same place I buried my mother.

Freya.

The room tilted under me. The sound drained out of everything. My chair scraped back without me deciding to stand and beside me Rowan was already on his feet too, and the sentinels behind us closed in fast, hands landing hard on our shoulders, forcing us back down into our seats, and I barely felt the weight of them.

"WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!"

Rowan and I roared it at the exact same time.