Chapter 10
"Regent Alpha."
The title cracked the air open. Lucian had no chance to soften it.
No chance to keep it inside quiet courtyards or unnamed conversations.
The whole front court heard it. The attendants carrying lamp oil heard it.
The temple guards heard it. I heard it while still holding a tray full of copied sanctuary notices and trying not to let my hands shake.
He answered the kneeling messenger in the voice I had never heard before.
Cooler.
Sharper.
The voice of a man no room would mistake for anything except command.
"Rise. Speak."
The messenger stood and bowed again. "Your presence is requested at the lower audience hall. The envoy from the capital awaits."
Capital.
The word hit almost as hard as the title. My steps had already stopped. My body knew before my mind finished assembling the blow.
Lyra.
Silver Court.
Adrian beside her.
Royal favor wrapped around betrayal until betrayal itself looked respectable.
And Lucian at the center of that machine.
Or above it.
Which was worse.
He turned then and saw me.
Saw too much at once.
The messenger was still speaking. Rowan had moved in from the side. Two attendants stood frozen by the wall with oil jars in their arms. The whole court seemed to tilt around one fact I should have known and yet had somehow gone on not naming. Lucian Voss was not merely a powerful guest.
He was the line behind the throne. He was the Alpha other Alphas obeyed when the crown needed teeth. He took one step toward me.
"Selene."
No.
I could not bear hearing my name in that voice while the title still rang in the air. I set the tray down on the nearest ledge with more care than I felt and turned.
"Selene," he said again, closer now.
I kept walking.
The cloister stones blurred at the edges. I did not run. Running would have been weakness, spectacle, confession. I walked like a woman with every right to withdraw from a conversation she had not agreed to have.
Only at the archway did his hand close around my wrist.
Lightly.
Too lightly to trap me.
Enough to stop me.
"Listen to me."
I looked at his hand first.
Then at his face.
The steadiness there hurt more than force would have.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because I did not intend for you to hear it like this."
The words came so close to an explanation that they made me colder.
"Hear what?" I said. "Your office? Your power? Your place in the world I have already had enough of?"
Rowan had halted well back. Sensible man. The courtyard behind us went on in deliberate half-silence, everyone suddenly occupied with not listening. Lucian released my wrist at once.
"I did not hide from you to mock you."
"No," I said. "You only omitted the most dangerous thing about yourself."
His jaw tightened.
"Dangerous to whom?"
I almost laughed.
"Do you truly need me to answer that?"
He looked at me for one long beat, and in that look I saw him sorting through pieces he did not yet possess. My father's letter. Lyra's name. Adrian's face at Silver Court. My recoil in the fig cloister. The bitterness I had not explained.
Not enough.
Never enough.
"Selene, whatever you think I am to Lyra—"
"I think she belongs to the same world you do."
"That is not an answer."
"It is all you are getting."
The restraint in him frayed.
Not into loudness.
Into intensity.
"No," he said quietly. "It is not."
For the first time since I had known him, I heard the true iron under the civility. Not aimed at enemies. At me. At the wall I was raising. I hated how much that shook me.
"Then let me make it easier," I said. "You do not owe me an account of your rank, my lord Regent. I was foolish enough to forget where men like you come from. That is my error, not yours."
Hurt crossed his face before he crushed it down. It would have moved me if I were not so full of older wounds.
"Men like me," he repeated.
"Yes."
"And what men are those?"
I smiled then. A bad smile. Thin as frost.
"The kind who can make a new life for someone in the capital while his old mate is disposed of in private."
That landed.
He went very still.
"Disposed of."
"Was there a better word for it?"
"Who are you talking about?"
I took one step back. This time he did not stop me.
"Now you hear the question too late."
His eyes darkened.
"Selene."
"No. Do not stand there and speak to me as though all your titles stop at the temple gate. They do not. They never did." I swallowed hard enough to hurt. "I was foolish to think this place was apart from that."
For one second, anger almost broke through his composure.
Not because I had insulted him.
Because I had placed him among people I despised and refused to sort the difference.
Good.
Let him feel a fraction of what it meant to have the floor disappear under a name.
"You are wrong about something," he said.
"Only one thing?"
"About me being on anyone's side by habit."
That should have mattered.
It did not.
Not enough.
"Then I congratulate your independence."
I turned and walked away before he could answer. Back in my room, the walls pressed close again. Lucian. Regent Alpha. Lyra's world. Adrian's new life.
All the warmth I had gathered around him suddenly looked reckless, as if I had mistaken the reflection of water for a spring.
Someone knocked after dusk.
Sister Moira entered with a tray of fresh lamp oil and a folded paper list. She stopped one pace inside and studied me.
"You look as though the mountain bit you."
"Perhaps it finally got tired of me."
She set the tray down.
"You know who he is now."
I stared.
"Everyone knows who he is."
"Yes." She did not deny it. "But now you know with your feelings attached, which is different."
There was no point pretending ignorance to her.
"You might have warned me."
"Would you have stayed away if I had?"
I opened my mouth.
Then shut it.
No.
That was the humiliating truth.
She handed me the folded paper.
"Supply allocations for the moon rite," she said. "And a reminder."
I unfolded it. Dates. Duties. Names assigned to pack tribute. At the bottom, written in Sister Moira's sharp hand:
Eleven days remain before formal rite review.
The room turned colder.
"Only eleven?"
"The temple counts by obligations, not comfort."
I sank onto the edge of the bed. Eleven days before sanctuary stopped being shelter and became paperwork, dispute, jurisdiction.
Eleven days before someone with rank higher than pity could decide where I belonged.
Vale Pack could claim a grieving bonded widow.
Ashbourne could claim court stability. Hart House could object, but objection was not the same as power.
"You cannot drift through this," Sister Moira said.
"I know."
"Do you?"
I looked up.
"The man outside your door may be many things. The temple is still only a ledge. Do not confuse shelter with a weapon."
That should have offended me.
Instead it made me want to cry from exhaustion.
"I am trying not to confuse anything."
"Then stop trying and choose."
She left me with the list, the lamp oil, and the truth.
Eleven days.
Late that night, when the whole corridor had gone still and even the bells held their breath between watches, a knock sounded at my door.
Not a servant's knock.
Not a temple sister's.
Three firm strikes, spaced with impossible patience. I knew who stood outside before he spoke.
"Selene. Open the door."