THE ALPHA WHO REJECTED HIS LUNA

For three seconds nobody in the ballroom breathed. It was like time had stopped.

Then Priya laughed. It was a fake sound that did not even reach her eyes. "She is not okay. Look at her, look at her eyes. She just tried to attack a guest on the terrace. Now she is making up stories to save face in front of the man who rejected her. This is the kind of crazy behavior the council warned Kade about."

"Check." Her voice was very calm. The black was still swallowing the whites of her eyes. "I am not asking anyone to take my word for it. I am asking Kade to check. He is an Alpha. He can smell a lie as well as I can now. Better probably, since he has had the ability his whole life instead of eleven months." Luna said

Every eye in the room turned to Kade. He did not move for a moment. Then slowly he turned to Priya. Something in his face had gone very still and very careful. It was like he was thinking hard about something he did not want to think about.

"Priya," he said quietly. "Look at me."

"Kade, do not do this in front of everyone. Do not let her. " Priya said

"Look at me," Kade said; now his voice was demanding.

Priya's calm face cracked for the first time that night. She looked at him, jaw tight, eyes bright. Kade inhaled slowly through his nose. He was trying to figure out if she was telling the truth.

His face changed. He said, "You are not pregnant. There is no scent of a child on you all."

The ballroom erupted into noise. People were gasping, talking, someones champagne glass shattered on the marble floor. Priyas mouth. Closed twice before she said anything.

"I was going to be. I was going to make sure of it tonight, actually, before your little rejected mate decided to crash my engagement and ruin everything again." She said.

Kade's voice was very cold. He said, "You lied about carrying my child. In front of four hundred witnesses. To trap me into a marriage before I could ask a question."

Priya said, "You needed to be pushed. You have been in love with a ghost for two years, Kade, a woman you threw away yourself. I was tired of waiting for you to move on from a rejection you chose. "

Kade said, "I chose it to save her life."

Priya said, " Look how well that worked out. She is not even a wolf anymore. She is something Draven built in a lab. You are standing here defending her like she is still the woman you rejected. She is not. She is not even close."

Luna felt those words. They hurt her.

Kade said to Priya, "Get out of my territory. The engagement is over."

Priya's eyes went wide, then narrow. She said, "You will regret this. Both of you will. You have no idea what I gave up to be standing here tonight, Kade. You have no idea who is actually paying for the privilege of standing to you."

She. Walked out through the terrace doors into the dark. This time no one stopped her.

The ballroom stayed frozen. Four hundred guests were holding their breath, waiting to see what the Alpha would do next.

Kade turned to Luna. He said, "I need to tell you something. Something I should have told you the second you walked back into this territory tonight."

Luna said, "What?"

Kade said, "Priya did not just show up in my life by accident two years ago. She was introduced to me. By a pack liaison who handled outside alliances. A liaison who came from Draven territory."

Luna felt like the floor was tilting under her feet.

She said, "She is one of them."

Kade said, "I do not know yet. I know she is connected. Which means whatever they did to you, whatever is happening in your body now. Someone has been feeding them information about you from inside my own pack. For two years."

Luna's black eyes finally began to fade. They were replaced by something colder, more focused than sadness.

"Then we find out who." She said.

Behind them, the terrace doors that Priya had walked through banged open again. It was not the wind. The air outside was dead calm. Every wolf in the ballroom turned toward the sound. They saw thirty Draven wolves standing shoulder to shoulder in the moonlight. At the center of them, smiling like she had planned this from the beginning, stood Priya.