Chapter 2

“Please, Julian… don’t do this to me. Not here.”

My voice was a pathetic, jagged thing, echoing through the silence of the Grand Hall. I was on my knees, the ivory silk of my dress blooming around me like a wilted lily on the cold marble. My fingers reached for the hem of his trousers, a desperate, instinctive grab for the man who had been my world only an hour ago.

Julian didn’t even flinch. He didn’t look down. He simply stepped back, leaving my hand to slap against the floor.

“Don’t touch me, Veda,” he said, his voice amplified by the room’s acoustics, dripping with a clinical sort of disgust. “You’re making a scene. It’s beneath the dignity of this Pack, though I suppose I shouldn't expect anything more from an Omega of your… limited caliber.”

A ripple of laughter moved through the crowd. The high-ranking elites, the predators in tailored suits, the women in diamonds who had always looked through me as if I were glass. Now, they were looking. They were feasting on my ruin.

“I did everything for you,” I whispered, my vision swimming. “I waited. I served. The Moon Goddess—”

“The Moon Goddess made a mistake,” Julian snapped, finally looking at me. His eyes, once warm as honey, were now as hard as amber. “She gave me a mate who can barely shift, a girl who spent her life cleaning my boots. How can you lead a pack when you can barely stand on your own two feet without trembling? You aren't a Luna, Veda. You’re a liability.”

Camilla stepped up onto the dais then, her hand sliding possessively into the crook of Julian’s elbow. She looked down at me, her blonde hair shimmering under the chandeliers, her face an exquisite mask of faux-pity.

“Oh, Veda,” she sighed, the sound carrying a serrated edge. “It’s embarrassing. Stop begging. You look like a dog waiting for a scrap. Have a little pride, even if you have nothing else.”

“You were in his bed,” I choked out, the words burning my throat. “My own sister.”

The crowd gasped, but Camilla didn't blink. She leaned her head on Julian’s shoulder, looking out at the Council Elders. “Desperate lies from a discarded heart. It’s tragic, really. Her mind is clearly fracturing under the weight of her own inadequacy.”

She looked at Julian, a slow, predatory light entering her eyes. She wasn’t just taking my mate; she was rewriting my existence. She leaned in, whispering something to the Elder Alaric, but she did it loudly enough for the front rows to hear.

“We can’t just leave her like this,” Camilla said, her voice dripping with mock-concern. “A rejected Omega is a stain on the pack’s psyche. She’ll become a rogue, or worse, a public reminder of Julian's mistake. We need to fix this. We need to settle the blood debt.”

Elder Alaric narrowed his eyes. “The Bennett family still owes a significant debt to the Enforcer Division for the border failures. The Council was going to demand land, but...”

“Why take land when you can provide a service?” Camilla suggested, her smile widening into something truly serpentine. She turned her gaze toward the back of the hall, where the shadows seemed to be congregating. “My sister has always been excellent at… domestic duties. And we all know the Head of the Enforcers has been living in that cold, glass fortress of his without a consort for far too long.”

The temperature in the room didn't just drop; it died.

“You can’t be serious,” Julian muttered, though his eyes lit up with a cruel, intrigued spark.

“Why not?” Camilla challenged, her voice rising to address the entire hall. “Veda is a Bennett. She carries the bloodline, even if she lacks the spirit. If she marries the Alpha of the Enforcers, the debt is wiped clean. Julian gets his true mate, the Pack gets its stability, and Veda… well, Veda finally gets a master who matches her temperament.”

She looked back at me, her eyes screaming I won. “She belongs with the Butcher, doesn't she? The monster of the Kingsley line deserves the pack’s most broken thing.”

The hall groaned as the massive, reinforced steel doors at the rear were hauled open by two guards.

The sound of his boots was rhythmic, heavy, and final.

Rowan Kingsley entered the hall like a storm front. He wasn't dressed in the finery of the other Alphas. He wore a black tactical shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms corded with muscle and mapped with scars. He didn't look at the crowd. He didn't look at the Council. He walked with a terrifying, predatory grace that made the Alphas in the room instinctively baring their throats.

He stopped ten feet from the dais. The air around him felt ionized, thick with the scent of rain, gunpowder, and old, lethal power. His face was a masterpiece of granite; harsh jawline, a slight shadow of stubble, and eyes the color of a winter sea.

He was the man who handled the things the Pack didn't want to see. The man who lived in the High-Rise District, surrounded by shadows and the smell of blood.

“Rowan,” Elder Alaric said, his voice uncharacteristically thin. “You’ve heard the suggestion?”

Rowan didn't answer immediately. He let his gaze sweep over Julian, who actually took a half-step back, and then over Camilla. Finally, his eyes dropped to me.

I was a mess. My ivory dress was stained from the floor, my hair was falling out of its pins, and my face was wet with the salt of my own humiliation. I looked like a victim. I felt like a corpse.

“The suggestion,” Rowan began, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that I felt in my marrow, “is that I take Julian’s leftovers to pay off a debt of gold and land.”

Julian found his voice, though it sounded forced. “It’s a fair trade, Uncle. She’s an Omega. She’s quiet. She knows how to serve. I’m sure she’ll fit right in with your… lifestyle.”

Rowan finally moved. He ascended the stairs of the dais, his presence expanding until he seemed to swallow the light. He stopped directly in front of me. I held my breath, my heart hammering so hard it felt like it would burst through my ribs. I had heard the stories. Rowan didn't keep weak things. He broke them. He threw them away.

He reached down.

I flinched, closing my eyes, waiting for the shove, the rejection, or the hand that would drag me out of the hall like a dog.