Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13

ELEANOR

A s those terrible words left his lips, Alexander lifted his eyes, meeting my gaze without an ounce of remorse.

He’d known I was there before he spoke. He’d known I was watching while he held Anastasia. He’d known, and he didn’t care.

I took one step back, then another, my legs shaky beneath me.

I tried to breathe, but the pain in my chest choked me. My vision swam, my ears ringing as Lara keened within me, her desire to return to Alexander’s receiving room and rip Anastasia off him almost taking over my mind.

With great difficulty, I pushed my wolf down and staggered away, my hand on the wall the only thing keeping me upright.

There was nothing between Alexander and me. I knew that.

I’d known it for a long time so why did hearing those words hurt even more than Dylan’s betrayal the day before our mating ceremony?

Why did it feel like I was dying?

I didn’t know how many steps I’d taken away from the receiving room before my legs gave way beneath me, my entire body trembling.

But I didn’t hit the ground.

Strong, lean, muscular arms wrapped around my waist, holding me up. A familiar scent hit me, and disappointment bloomed dark and heavy in my heart.

As unlikely as it was, I’d been expecting someone else.

I looked up at Dylan, who examined me with an unmistakable look of worry in his eyes.

“Eleanor, are you?—”

I shoved him away before he could complete his statement.

“Stay the hell away from me,” I snapped, walking past him.

I didn’t need sympathy from the wolf who’d betrayed me, who looked too much like the wolf who’d just broken me with one sentence and a glance.

But Dylan didn’t stay the hell away from me.

“What’s wrong?” he insisted, easily outpacing me and standing right in my path. “Did something else happen?”

“Just leave me the fuck alone!” I growled, slightly terrified by the sudden burning in my eyes.

Damn it.

I wasn’t going to cry because of Alexander. He didn’t deserve my tears, and I…I didn’t even like him enough to cry over him.

Dylan looked past me, his gaze flitting to Alexander’s partly opened door at the end of the hallway and then back at me.

Something shifted in his expression and he embraced me, his voice low, steady, and understanding in my ear.

“I’m so sorry, Eleanor.”

I hit Dylan, trying to break his hold on me, but his grip remained secure.

“It’s all right, Eleanor. It’s all right,” he murmured.

I fought off a tremble. Of course, it was all right.

I wasn’t hurt by Alexander’s actions.

Neither was I hurt by his words or the way he was familiar with Anastasia in a way he never was with me or the way he held her, their lips inches apart, or the way?—

I stopped hitting Dylan, my hands falling to my sides and a sob ripping out of me as a painful realization hit me.

I wanted Alexander to be in Dylan’s place, holding me and trying to comfort me.

I realized that my hatred for Alexander might not even be hatred.

The moment that realization hit, I hated myself.

How could I have grown up with an abusive, emotionally unavailable father, only to fall for an even more unavailable man?

How?

Dylan’s hand ran down my back, drawing me out of my maze of thoughts long enough for me to realize I was still in his embrace.

I took a step back, wiping at my tears furiously and feeling more than a little embarrassed.

“Excuse me,” I said hurriedly, turning away.

I didn’t make it more than a step away before Dylan grabbed my arm.

“Eleanor, we were friends once. I want to be here for you.”

I met his earnest, guileless gaze, seeing the hurt glistening in those hazel eyes—hurt that I was pushing him away again, despite all his explanations and apologies for his past mistakes.

But Dylan couldn’t be here for me. Not when he was mated with a child on the way.

The truth I didn’t dare mention was that, regardless of how irrational it was, I didn’t think I could ever forgive Dylan.

If he hadn’t cheated on me, we would be happily mated. I would be with him, nurturing safe, happy feelings, instead of trying to survive this rollercoaster of emotions with Alexander.

“You—” I paused, my words dying on my tongue when I noticed someone walking toward us.

It was my former best friend, who was probably behind the attempt on my life.

Micah.

I tensed and Dylan followed my gaze, his body stiffening at the sight of his mate.

Instead of putting some distance between us to prevent a misunderstanding, he made it worse, moving in front of me to protect me from Micah.

To my surprise, Micah ignored the motion, making her way toward us with a small but seemingly genuine smile.

“My love, there you are,” she cooed, dropping a kiss on Dylan’s cheek before turning to me with an uncharacteristic look of concern on her face.

“Are you all right, Eleanor? You don’t look too good.”

Dylan glanced at Micah, the confusion and suspicion in his eyes a direct reflection of my thoughts.

I shook my head, unwilling to get caught up in whatever this was.

“I’m fine. Please excuse me.”

With a small incline of my head, I walked away from the couple and headed down the hallway.

It took a few seconds before I heard the soft pattering of steps, and then Micah’s voice reached me.

“Eleanor, wait!”

I paused, turning to face a slightly out-of-breath Micah.

She took my hand, a fragile smile on her face, and for a moment, it was almost like seeing my best friend again. Almost.

“Look, Eleanor, I know we can never be friends after everything that happened, but I…I want to make things up to you.” Her free hand dropped to cradle her belly, and her eyes were steady on mine.

“As your luna, if you’re ever in need of help, I’ll do anything within my capacity to assist you.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

I wasn’t sure if I even believed her.

Micah seemed sincere right now, but she’d also seemed sincere during the years she’d pretended to be my best friend.

I nodded once, avoiding her gaze as I pulled my hand out of her grasp.

“Thank you.”

I didn’t return to the party.

Instead, I went home, took a shower that did nothing to quiet the turmoil in my mind, and lay on my bed until I heard Alexander return.

I wanted to confront him, but I stopped myself.

How could I confront Alexander about his relationship with Anastasia when we’d never had a real relationship?

I couldn’t.

I couldn’t sleep that night either, at least not until the wee hours of the morning, because my traitorous body was so used to falling asleep in Alexander’s bed with his scent enveloping me that my bed felt cold, foreign, and uncomfortable.

When I woke from my fitful sleep, Alexander was gone.

Lily said he had business outside the pack and would be back in two to three days.

Once more, he’d left without a goodbye.

Not that it bothered me.

Last night had been a weak moment that would not repeat itself. Alexander meant nothing to me, and it would remain that way.

“...left to sign the treaty,” West was saying to Seraphina, but I was only half-listening.

Instead of focusing on my post-training stretches, my mind was leagues away, dwelling on the last person I should have been thinking about.

Focus, Eleanor, I tried to tell myself, to no avail.

Despite all my efforts, the memory of Alexander’s callous gaze from the night before refused to leave me.

“I think Father would be proud of the decisions he’s made,” Seraphina agreed, a soft smile on her face.

She was referring to Dylan, who was currently off finalizing the official terms and signing the treaty with the Bloodfrost Pack. Alexander wasn’t with him, though.

Anastasia was also mysteriously absent.

Apparently, only the Goddess knew where my mate had wandered off to with his friend .

Not that it mattered to me.

Seraphina tapped my arm, her eyes searching mine questioningly, like she’d been trying to get my attention for some time.

“Eleanor, are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” I forced a smile I could barely feel. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

A mischievous grin made its way to Seraphina’s face.

“Was the party that good or…” She waggled her eyebrows. “Were you and Alexander?—”

My smile dropped.

“We don’t have that type of relationship,” I snapped, and Seraphina’s expression shifted to worry.

Her lips parted, but I never got to hear what she had to say because a female pack warrior walked up to us.

“Eleanor, the luna would like to see you.” Her gaze drifted to Seraphina and West. “Alone.”

I was immediately on guard.

The female pack warrior was disturbingly familiar.

Her name was Sona, and recently she’d been attached to Micah as a security detail, but I remembered her from earlier than that. She’d been one of the pack warriors who’d escorted me to see Micah under the guise that I’d been “summoned by the alpha” the day my heat commenced.

Seraphina stood by my side, taking a protective stance.

I placed my hand on her arm and shook my head.

“Seraphina, it’s fine.”

If Micah wanted to do something shady, she wouldn’t have summoned me so openly. She would have had her people get me while I was alone.

Either way, I was going in with wide-open eyes and an agenda. I could use this as an opportunity to confirm or refute my suspicions about Micah’s involvement in the rogue attack.

Micah was waiting on the balcony overlooking the courtyard when I arrived, her back to me.

“You came.” She turned to face me, her auburn hair aflame in the light of the sun, the wind tugging at her flowy white dress. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

Neither was I. Yet here I was.

“Why did you want to see me?” I asked.

Micah took one step toward me, then another, walking away from the balcony.

“You look good,” she said at last, her head tilted slightly to the side, “for someone who should’ve been ripped apart by rogues two nights ago.”

A chill swept through me.

Due to how quickly the issue had been cleaned up, no one knew about the rogue attack save Alexander, Dylan, Seraphina, West, and…whoever had been behind the attack.

I’d been right.

“You forged the note,” I breathed.

Micah didn’t deny it.

She cradled her baby bump as she drifted forward, her brown gaze distant.

“After I found out I was pregnant, I wanted to be happy and forget about you, Eleanor. I really did,” she said softly. “But you won’t rest until you’ve ruined my family and stolen my mate.”

Ruined her family? Stolen her mate?

What was she going on about?

“Micah, I never—” I began, but she didn’t let me finish. Her gaze sharpened as she glared bitterly at me.

“I see the way he looks at you. The way he touches you.” Her eyes turned cold. “That night you caught us together was the last time he touched me.”

So Dylan had been telling the truth.

I thought of all the times he’d begged me for another chance and found myself fighting back an inexplicable wave of guilt.

By not pushing him away firmly enough, had I been doing the same thing Micah had done to me?

I met Micah’s gaze evenly.

“Micah, I don’t have a relationship with Dylan.”

She moved even closer, her dark brown eyes searching mine.

Whatever she saw must not have pleased her because her jaw clenched, her gaze darkening.

“I don’t believe you, Eleanor.”

I felt her hand at my side and I instinctively reached out to stop her, but I was too late.

Micah held the silver dagger she’d pulled from the sheath at my hip, murder gleaming in her eyes.

She was going to kill me.

I moved quickly, hitting her hand and knocking off her aim, but I still felt the clean slice of the silver blade at my neck.

I touched the injury, and my hand came away wet and sticky with my blood.

Micah moved again, but this time, I caught her wrist. We grappled for the blade. I tried to get it away from my neck, while Micah tried to stab my jugular.

In the middle of the squabble, Micah met my gaze and the corner of her lips tipped up into a smirk.

Confusion jolted through me as Micah reversed her aim, taking advantage of my momentum to stab the silver blade right into her shoulder, a scream ripping from her lips.

I froze, unable to understand how Micah had missed me and impaled herself.

That was when the pack warriors, alerted by Micah’s scream, raced in just in time to see their pregnant luna bleeding out…with my hands on the dagger.

Micah began to sob uncontrollably, her body shaking with severe tremors.

“My baby, my baby…” she cried, even though the wound was nowhere near her belly.

She raised her head to meet my gaze and her voice hardened swiftly. “This woman tried to kill me. Seize her!”

“But I didn’t—” I tried to protest, but two pack warriors grabbed me.

Micah rose to her feet with the help of her pack warriors, her hand on her bleeding shoulder as she turned down their offers to escort her to the infirmary.

“No,” Micah growled, her voice holding both panic and fury. “Bring the physicians to me. I will see this traitor punished for attempting to kill my child and me to jeopardize the future of the Nightshade Pack.”

This was her plan all along, and I’d fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.

I was literally caught red-handed. Nothing I said could exonerate me now.

“Micah, don’t do this,” I said, struggling against the guards.

Dark amusement sparked to life in her brown gaze, but her voice was shaky with righteous indignation.

“You should’ve thought twice before attacking me,” she said.

The attempted murder of the luna of a pack was bad enough. The attempted murder of a pregnant luna by someone whose mate was in line to inherit was much, much worse.

She could order me executed that very moment.

“You can’t kill me without a fair trial,” I announced loudly, hoping to buy some time.

Micah’s features hardened.

“Take her to the square,” she instructed the pack warriors sharply, her hand still applying pressure to her wound.

I might have demanded a fair trial, but I knew that was the last thing I would get from the moment it began.

“She tried to kill our luna. I saw it,” said Sona, who was the first to testify.

The rest of the warriors who’d arrested me corroborated her claims, and naturally, since Micah was still bleeding and was the leader of the trial’s council, I wasn’t even allowed to speak.

The two pack warriors who’d arrested me stood at my side, holding me captive even though my wrists were chained with silver.

From my stand below the elevated podium, I could see Seraphina pushing her way to me. West was at her side, but several pack warriors surrounded them, preventing them from reaching me.

There was no escaping this.

Micah spoke last, the clamoring crowd falling silent at the sound of her voice.

“I summoned Eleanor to pass on a message from the alpha, but she attacked me and accused me of stealing her position as luna of this pack. I thought she was a friend, but she attacked me.”

The crazy part was that she sounded like she was telling the truth. Her voice trembled at exactly the right moments, as if she’d actually been shocked by this violent act against her.

“According to the laws of this pack, the punishment is death,” Micah announced, and murmurs broke out across the crowd. Though I was too far away to hear most of them, I could pick out one word—a name.

Alexander.

With the obvious lack of affection between Alexander and me, it was rather obvious to the entire pack that our relationship wasn’t real, which was why the pack hadn’t truly accepted me.

At least, that was my theory.

But it didn’t change the fact that I was Alexander’s mate. What would he do if he returned to find that his mate had been executed?

Micah remained unfazed, looking over the crowd with an almost benevolent look in her eyes as she continued.

“However, I can’t do that to a wolf who is not just my sister-in-law, but was my good friend.” She turned to face me. “I have decided to grant her mercy. If she takes a hundred strikes of a silver-studded whip, I will accept her apologies for her transgressions and let her live.”

A smatter of murmurs broke out across the crowd and I barely held back a shiver of fear at Micah’s words.

A silver-studded whip was exactly what it sounded like—barbed with tiny pieces of silver that often ended up embedded in the skin being whipped, it was an infamous torture device that ended up killing people instead of getting intel out of them.

Forget about a hundred. It would flay me open in less than five strikes, and I’d bleed out in less than twenty.

Micah hadn’t decided to spare me. This was inhumane callousness disguised as mercy. She didn’t just want to see me die—she wanted me to suffer first.

And even if she hadn’t chosen the whip as the punishment, I would never, ever apologize to her.

She drifted close to me, the very depiction of an angel as she met my gaze.

“I forgive you, Eleanor,” she said, loudly enough for the people around us to hear.

I spat at her, my phlegm hitting her squarely on the cheek.

“You lying, traitorous bitch,” I growled, my gaze steady on her, and the crowd broke into an impassioned frenzy.

Micah’s benevolent smile disappeared, and she raised her hand to hit me.

Closing my eyes, I braced for a slap that never landed.

The direction of the wind shifted, carrying a familiar scent of cinnamon and spice to me.

My eyes flashed open, and my jaw dropped as I saw Alexander standing between Micah and me, holding her raised hand.

Micah couldn’t disguise her shock either. Her hand still hung suspended in the air even after Alexander let go of her.

He spun to face the warriors who held me.

“Unchain her and let her go,” he commanded, and the guards immediately complied. The silver chains slipped off my hands, but I barely noticed.

I was looking at Alexander. Just Alexander.

He came back for me.

I hugged him, burying my head in his chest and inhaling his scent, knowing he would push me away as usual, but I couldn’t have cared less.

Alexander didn’t return my hug, but he didn’t push me away either.

“You can’t do this!” Micah shrieked, all semblance of sweetness gone. “Your mate attacked me and put the heir to this pack in danger! The council and I have decided her fate. You can’t overturn our sentence and?—”

“I don’t intend to,” Alexander interrupted her, his voice soft but steely.

I froze in his arms. He didn’t intend to overturn her unfair sentencing?

Alexander pried me off him and handed me over to West, who had somehow mounted the podium while I was distracted. Then he faced Micah head-on.

“I apologize for my mate’s transgressions. I will take the punishment for her,” he said.

Shock raced through me at Alexander’s words and I pushed against West’s hold, trying to get back to him.

“You can’t!” I cried, but he didn’t even look at me. His gaze was solely focused on Micah, who seemed confused at this turn of events. But when she saw the pain in my eyes, a smirk tugged at the corner of her lips.

I hit West harder than I ever had, but his hold on me was as secure as ever.

If Alexander took that beating, he would die.

No.

No.

If Alexander died, then I…no, he couldn’t die.

I refused to accept it.

I lashed out at West, but he bore my attacks stoically as he lifted me off the ground and carried me away from the podium where my mate’s whipping was about to begin.

“If you insist.” Micah shrugged and nodded at the wolves who would carry out the sentence.

They approached Alexander, each of them holding a barbed whip in their hands.

Alexander stood still, his eyes on the now-silent crowd.

“Please let me go,” I begged West.

I would take the damn punishment; I would apologize to Micah. Anything at all, so long as nothing happened to Alexander.

West’s hold on me didn’t budge.

“I’m sorry, Eleanor.”

The square was so quiet now that I could hear my uncontrollable sobs as the whip hissed down to Alexander’s back and came away bloody.

My mate didn’t flinch. His gray eyes found mine across the crowd that separated us.

“One,” the wolf counted.