Chapter 4 Blood That Shouldn't Exit

Luna's POV

For a moment, nothing in the room moved.

I heard everything at once. The crackle of a dying candle. Cassian's breath catching in his chest. Somewhere far down the corridor, the sound of steel scraping steel as Silvermoon warriors and vampire guards squared off in the hallway.

And my own heartbeat, slow and heavy, thudding in my ears like a drum from underwater.

She was one of mine.

"No," I said.

It was the only word I had.

"Luna." My father's hands lifted toward me, shaking. I had never seen them shake. Not at Victor's funeral. Not once in twenty-one years. "Pup, listen to me..."

"Don't call me that."

"Please."

"Is it true?"

He opened his mouth. Closed it. His eyes, the same warm brown as Victor's, filled with something I had never seen in them before.

Fear.

"Is it true?"

"Yes."

One word. Quiet. Final.

The floor tilted under my feet.

I took a step back, then another, until my shoulders hit the wall. My wolf had gone silent inside me, not in fear, but in something worse. Recognition. As if some locked door in the back of my mind had just been kicked open and she was standing in the doorway, staring at everything I had never let myself see.

The speed. The senses that were too sharp. The way vampires always watched me on the broadcast screens, as if they knew me. The silver that should have killed me and didn't.

"Twenty-one years," I whispered. "You let me believe..."

"I was protecting you."

"From what?"

"From this." His voice broke. "From exactly this."

"Your mother was Seraphine Aldric," King Adrian said quietly. "A daughter of the vampire court. She loved your father, and your father loved her, and the day you were born, it should have been impossible."

"Impossible?"

"A vampire and a wolf cannot have a child." His red eyes held mine. "Our blood rejects each other. For a thousand years, every attempt ended in tragedy. But you survived, Luna. You lived. Which means you are something the world has never seen."

"A hybrid," Cassian murmured behind me.

I flinched at the word. I couldn't help it.

It sounded like monster.

"No." My father's voice hardened. He stepped between me and the king. "She is not a weapon, Adrian. She is not a symbol. She's my daughter, and I swore on Seraphine's grave that nobody would ever use her."

"Nobody is using her."

"You're looking at her like she's a crown."

"I am looking at her," the king said very softly, "like she is the last piece of someone I lost."

My father went rigid.

Someone he lost.

"She chose me, Adrian." My father's voice cracked on the words. "She chose me."

The king didn't answer. But something flickered across his face, old and raw, and he looked away first.

I looked from one man to the other, at two men who had clearly known each other a very long time, and it hit me with the force of a fist. This wasn't just politics. It wasn't about a border or a war.

It was personal.

Seraphine had been someone to both of them.

"Who was she to you?" I asked the king.

He didn't answer.

"Who was she?"

"Luna." Cassian's hand closed gently around my wrist. His fingers were cool and steady, and the touch rolled through me like a current, grounding me, the first solid thing I'd felt in minutes. "Breathe."

"I am breathing."

"No. You're not."

I wasn't. My lungs were locked. I sucked in air, and my vision blurred, and the room sharpened in a way that made my head spin. Every candle flame was suddenly its own tiny universe. I could hear a guard swallowing at the far end of the hall. I could smell fear on every person in the room, sour and sharp.

And I could smell blood.

Not mine. Somebody else's. Faint, metallic, drifting in through the open doorway, and my mouth went dry in a way it had never gone dry before.

My gums ached.

Cassian's grip tightened. "Luna, look at me."

I looked.

His eyes were the same ice-blue they'd been on the track, but his pupils had gone wide, and his face had gone very still.

"What?" I whispered. "What is it?"

"Your eyes."

I turned my head toward the mirror hanging on the wall.

A girl stared back at me.

Pale. Wild-haired. Mud on her cheekbone, a scrape across her jaw. Gold flickered in her left eye, the familiar wolf-gold I'd had since I first shifted.

But her right eye was red.

Not the burning crimson of a vampire in a rage. A deep, dark, rich red, like wine held up to firelight.

I put a hand over my mouth.

"Dad."

"I know." He had gone gray. "I know, pup."

"What is happening to me?"

"It's the bloodline waking up. It was always going to, once you..." He glanced at Cassian, and I understood without being told. Once you met your mate. "I tried to keep it quiet. I swear I tried."

"Rowan." The king's voice had changed. Sharper. "Enough. The Council is already waiting. If they see what she is..."

"They'll see what she is anyway," Darius said from the doorway.

Everyone turned.

He was leaning against the frame with his arms crossed, calm and almost relaxed, like a man watching an interesting play. But his gray eyes were fixed on my face, and I felt something cold slither down my spine.

"Forgive me," he said, "but I'm not sure the king understands how fast this will spread. There are forty vampire guards in this compound. Every one of them just heard a Silvermoon alpha invade our delegation's quarters. And every one of them smelled what's in this room."

"What are you saying?" Cassian asked.

"I'm saying you've got maybe ten minutes before the whole delegation knows the wolf girl is something else." Darius's smile didn't reach his eyes. "And in ten minutes, nobody here is going to care that you're protecting her, Cass."

"You think I care what they think?"

"You should."

"Enough." The king raised one hand. "We will take this to the throne hall. Rowan, you will come with us. Your warriors will remain here. Luna..."

"I'm not going anywhere without my father."

"You are not leaving this compound at all," the king said. "Not until the Council decides..."

"Decides?"

"Luna." My father caught my arm. "Don't."

"They're going to put me on trial for being born?"

"Not for being born."

The voice came from the corridor.

Slow, dry, and perfectly pleasant. The kind of voice that smiled while it cut you.

Every guard in the doorway shifted aside, and a tall figure in the white robes of the Council stepped through. Silver-haired. Narrow-faced. Carrying a small velvet pouch in one gloved hand.

"Councilor Vesper," King Adrian said, in a tone I couldn't read.

"Your Majesty." The man gave a shallow bow, then turned to me with an expression of mild, almost sympathetic regret. "Miss Vale. I do apologize for the intrusion. I'm afraid I'm here on official business."

"What business?" Cassian asked coldly.

"A murder, Your Highness." Vesper's gaze slid back to me. "One of our guards was found dead in the forest an hour ago. Throat torn open. And beside his body, we found this."

He opened the velvet pouch and tipped it over his palm.

A small silver crescent pendant slid out, dangling on a broken chain.

I'd said it myself, an hour ago, in this very room. Silvermoon wolves don't leave their pendants behind. We bury them with our dead.

I had thought it was a cheap trick. Some random wolf's pendant, planted to frame us.

Then the pendant turned in the lamplight, and I saw the letters scratched into the back.

V.V.

My knees nearly gave way.

I knew those scratches. Victor had carved them himself when he was twelve years old, with a stolen pocketknife, laughing so hard he'd nicked his thumb. He'd worn it every single day of his life. He'd worn it the night he died.

And five years ago, I had watched them lower it into the ground with him.

"That's impossible," I whispered.

"Is it?" Vesper's voice was gentle. "Then perhaps you can explain, Miss Vale, how your dead brother's pendant ended up beside a murdered guard."

My father made a sound like something tearing.

Cassian's fingers dug into my wrist.

And in the doorway, very softly, Darius began to smile.