Rejected at the Banquet: My Mate Chose the Servant Over Me

I told Elara everything on the morning of the banquet.

We sat on the floor of my cottage with Barnaby between us and the footage open on my laptop, and I watched her face go through about six different emotions in under two minutes. Shock first. Then fury—the quiet, flat kind that was more dangerous than screaming. Then something that settled into a look I recognized: the specific expression of a woman who has made up her mind.

She didn't ask me if I was sure. She didn't ask me if I was okay. She just looked at the screen, looked at me, and said, 'Tell me exactly where you need me.'

I told her.

Private wing corridor, north end, before the guests arrived. She'd need access to the inter-pack mind-link broadcast channel—I'd already arranged that through a Nighthollow pack member who owed Maverick a considerable favor and asked no questions. The moment the situation in the private wing became unmistakable, she'd activate the transmission.

'Unmistakable,' she repeated.

'You'll know,' I said.

She looked at me for a long moment. Then she reached over, squeezed my hand once, and stood up. 'I'll be in position an hour early.'

That was Elara. No drama, no ceremony. Just: tell me what to do and consider it done.

I sat with Barnaby after she left and rolled the moonstone between my fingers and thought about all the ways tonight could go wrong. I thought about them carefully, one by one, and for each one I found the answer I'd already prepared. Then I put the moonstone in my pocket, got dressed, and drove to Nighthollow.

---

The banquet hall was already full when I arrived.

Nighthollow's estate could hold three hundred wolves comfortably, and tonight it was close to that—wolves from two allied territories moving through the main hall in formal dress, the air thick with competing scents and the low roar of a crowd that had been drinking for an hour. Chandeliers threw warm gold light across the room. The whole thing looked like something out of a painting.

I spotted Adrianna within four minutes.

She was working the room the way she always did at these events—unhurried, graceful, letting people come to her rather than chasing attention. She was wearing my moonstone collar. The crescent bracelet was on her wrist. Her scent drifted across the hall in waves, that familiar cedar blossom and white sage that was mine, that had always been mine, sitting on her skin like a crown she'd stolen off my head while I slept.

But I noticed something. It was subtle—the kind of thing you'd only catch if you knew exactly what you were looking for. The scent wasn't as sharp as it had been at the Harvest Moon Banquet. The edges were softer. Thinner. The last fresh application was wearing down, and there was nothing left to replace it.

Her parents had been gone for two weeks.

I took a glass of water from a passing tray and watched her receive compliments she hadn't earned, and I felt nothing in particular. Just that cold, steady clarity I'd been living inside since the night I watched the footage.

Brody found me twenty minutes later.

I heard him before I saw him—that particular quality of deliberate footfall, the pace of someone who has rehearsed their entrance. He materialized at my shoulder with a champagne flute in each hand and a smile that had cost him nothing to produce.

'Bella.' He said my name like it was a small concession. 'I was hoping I'd find you.'

'Brody.' I kept my voice even. Tired, even. The voice of a woman who had been crying for two weeks and had finally run dry.

'I wanted to say—' He paused, performing a search for the right words. 'No hard feelings. I know this hasn't been easy. I thought maybe a toast.' He extended one of the flutes toward me. 'To moving forward.'

I looked at the glass.

I knew exactly what was in it. I'd watched them plan it in my own bedroom, in my own robe, on my own bed. Wolfsbane, concentrated, enough to knock my wolf flat for an hour. Enough to make me compliant and confused and easy to photograph.

I took the flute from his hand.

He watched me with that smooth, calibrated warmth, and I held his gaze with the expression I'd practiced—wounded, accepting, a woman too tired to fight anymore. I let my shoulders drop just slightly. I let my eyes go a little glassy.

He believed it completely. I could see it in the way his posture eased.

Then I shifted my weight, turning just slightly as if to look across the room, and in the same unhurried motion, I set his glass down on the tray of a passing server and replaced it with the one in my own hand.

The swap took less than two seconds. It looked like nothing.

I turned back and raised the remaining flute. 'To moving forward,' I said.

We drank.

I watched his throat move as he swallowed, and I felt something that wasn't quite satisfaction and wasn't quite grief. It was quieter than both. More final.

He stayed for another minute, saying something I didn't track, and then moved back toward Adrianna. I watched him go.

It didn't take long. Maybe ten minutes. I saw the moment it started—the slight hesitation in his step, the way his head turned as if he'd lost the thread of a conversation. His eyes went a little unfocused. The room was loud and bright and full of competing scents, and his wolf, newly silenced, couldn't sort any of it.

Except one.

Adriana's artificial scent cut through the fog like a blade. Too strong, too singular, the only clear signal left in his scrambled senses. I watched his body orient toward her the way a compass needle swings north—not a choice, just physics. He crossed the room. He said something in her ear. She looked up at him, and I saw the flicker of confusion cross her face before she read it as urgency and let him pull her toward the corridor that led to the private wing.

I set down my glass.

Elara was already in position.