Chapter 3 The Face I Never Knew I Had

Luna's POV

Nobody had ever said those words to me before.

I'd heard "you look like Victor." I'd heard "you have your father's stubborn jaw." But my mother had died the night I was born, and my father had never kept a single photograph of her. No portrait. No keepsake. Nothing to hold, nothing to compare.

I had never once seen her face.

And now the vampire king, the most feared man in the supernatural world, was staring at mine like he was looking at a ghost.

"I think you've mistaken me for someone else," I said. My voice came out smaller than I wanted.

"No." King Adrian stepped into the room, and the air changed with him. Every candle on the wall seemed to lean away. He was older than anyone I'd ever met, with silver at his temples and a face carved from cold stone, but his eyes, those burning red eyes, shook as they moved over me. "I have not mistaken anything."

"Father." Cassian had moved between us before I even saw him go. His hands were clenched, his shoulders stiff, and his voice was one I hadn't heard from him yet. Quiet. Careful. The voice of someone standing at the edge of a cliff. "She's injured. She was shot on the training field tonight. Whatever you want to say to her, it can wait."

"Move aside, Cassian."

"No."

Silence.

The six guards behind the king stiffened. Even Darius straightened in the doorway, his gray eyes flicking from father to son like a man watching a wall begin to crack.

"You are telling me no?" the king said softly.

"I'm telling you she's under my protection."

Under his protection?

I stared at the back of Cassian's head, at the tight line of his neck, at the way he stood, as if he would tear the whole delegation apart before he let anyone near me. We had known each other for a single night. An hour ago, he had been a stranger in the dark.

Now there was a rope between our ribs, and every time he spoke, I felt it hum.

I hated how much I liked it.

"Your protection," King Adrian repeated, and for one frozen second, I thought he would strike his own son. Instead his eyes dropped to the hand Cassian had been holding, the one that had burned, the one that had healed. "Show me."

"Show you what?"

"The wolf's wound."

I swallowed. Don't. Don't show him.

But the king's gaze was already on my palm, and there was nothing to see. No scar. No blister. Not even a mark where the silver had eaten through my skin an hour ago.

Something moved across his face. Grief. Fury. Wonder. I couldn't tell which, because it changed too fast.

"Silver," he murmured. "She touched silver."

"And it healed," Cassian said. "In minutes."

"Of course it did."

"Father..."

"Of course, Cassian." The king laughed, a low, broken sound without any humor in it. "She is exactly what I was afraid she would be."

My heart hammered. "What does that mean?"

He turned to me, and his voice softened in a way that made my skin crawl. It was too gentle. Like speaking to a wounded animal.

"Child, what do you know of your mother?"

"She was a wolf." The words came out harder than I meant. "She died when I was born. That's all my father ever told me."

"Is that what he said?"

"Why? What did you know about her?"

His lips parted.

"Your Majesty." Darius's voice slid in smooth and calm, and I would remember the exact tone later, the way it cut through the room like a blade through silk. "The Council is waiting in the throne hall. Perhaps this conversation should be had in private."

The king didn't look at him.

But he stopped.

I watched him pull the mask back onto his face, piece by piece, until the grieving man in front of me vanished and the ruler returned. When he spoke again, his voice was ice.

"Darius is right. This is not the place."

"I'm not going anywhere with you," I said.

"You are not being invited."

Two of the black-armored guards stepped forward. Cassian's whole body went hard as steel.

"Touch her," he said, "and I'll break your hands."

"Cassian." I grabbed his sleeve before I could stop myself. The fabric was cold, and his muscles were shaking. "Don't."

He didn't turn. But his fingers found mine, just for a second. A brush. A promise.

"I won't let them take you," he whispered.

"You don't have a choice."

"I always have a choice."

Not tonight, I thought. Not with an army of vampires and a dead guard and a king who looks at me like I'm the answer to a question he's been asking for twenty-one years.

Then a sound rose across the compound.

It started low, far away, so deep I felt it in my bones before I heard it. A single howl. Then another. Then a dozen, rolling out of the forest like thunder breaking over the hills.

My entire body went still.

I knew that howl.

It was my father's.

And it wasn't the call of an Alpha greeting guests. It was the war cry of Silvermoon, and it had never been used in my lifetime.

"They've come for her," one of the guards muttered.

"Seal the gates," the king snapped.

"Too late, Your Majesty. They're already inside."

Boots hit the corridor. Heavy, fast, close. I heard the shouts of guards, the shriek of steel, the crack of something slamming into a wall.

The door burst open.

My father filled the entrance, tall and broad-shouldered, his gray-streaked hair wild, his Alpha aura rolling off him in waves so thick the candles guttered out. Behind him stood a dozen Silvermoon warriors, eyes glowing gold, claws half-shifted.

Alpha Rowan Vale had never once raised his voice at me in my life.

"LUNA."

He crossed the room in three strides. His hands closed around my shoulders, rough and warm and shaking, and he looked me over, head to toe, frantic. "Are you hurt? Did they touch you? Did anyone touch you?"

"Dad, I'm fine, I..."

"We're leaving. Now."

"Rowan." The king's voice sliced through the room like a whip. "Twenty-one years."

My father froze.

I felt it through his hands first. A tremor that ran straight through his arms. Then his head turned, slowly, toward the vampire king, and his face drained to the color of ash.

"Adrian," he said hoarsely.

"You hid her daughter from me." The king's red eyes burned. "You buried Seraphine in the woods where none of us could even say goodbye."

"I did what I had to."

"And then you took Seraphine's daughter."

The words hit me like a blow.

Seraphine's daughter.

Not Rowan's daughter. Not Luna.

He said it as if my father had no right to me at all.

I pulled back from my father's grip. "Dad?"

He wouldn't look at me.

"Dad, what is he talking about?"

"Luna, we're leaving." His voice cracked. "Please. Don't listen to him."

"Tell her," King Adrian said quietly. "Tell her what she is, Rowan. Or I will."

I looked at Cassian. He was staring at his father like he had never seen him before.

I looked at Darius. For one second, the mask slipped, and I saw something sharp and glittering behind his gray eyes. Not shock. Not confusion.

Satisfaction.

Then the king spoke again, and the whole room went silent.

"Your mother was not a wolf, Luna."

My father closed his eyes.

"She was one of mine."