She jumped 14

I barely had time to lace my boots when the knock came. Three sharp pounds—too precise to be Hector, too cold to be friendly.

Sariah burst in without permission, her face pale as winter frost. “They’re coming for you,” she whispered, eyes wild with panic.

“What are you talking about?”

“Cressa’s accusing you of breaking the Selection Code.” Her voice dropped to a desperate hiss. “She told the Council she saw you kissing Hector in the gardens last night.”

My blood turned to ice in my veins. “That never happened.”

“She doesn’t care about truth. She’s got one of the vision orbs and a falsified seal from the temple archives. She’s claiming you used forbidden magic to manipulate his bond, that you’re some kind of sorceress who—”

A second knock thundered through my chamber—louder, more insistent. No time to run. No time to think.

I grabbed Sariah’s wrist hard enough to leave bruises. “If they try to silence me permanently—”

“Don’t say that. Don’t even think it.”

“If they try, find Hector immediately. Tell him everything. And keep the scroll safe—the one from my mother’s things. Promise me.”

She nodded once, terror flickering across her features, before slipping out the window like shadow given form.

Then the Matrons came for me.

Two guards in ceremonial armor. Three Council aides with scrolls that reeked of official condemnation. One High Matron, pale and rigid as carved bone.

“Lyssira Fowler,” the High Matron’s voice cut through the morning air like a blade. “By order of the Council of Elders, you are hereby placed under house arrest for suspected bond corruption, magical misconduct, and violation of the sacred Selection Code.”

“You’re lying,” I snapped, backing toward the window Sariah had escaped through. “Every word is fabricated poison.”

“We’re conducting a thorough investigation into your… activities.”

“You’re orchestrating a persecution because you can’t control me.”

They ignored my protests entirely. I didn’t resist when they approached—not when the enchanted cuffs clicked around my wrists like a lover’s betrayal, burning cold against my skin. Fighting would only give them more ammunition.

The lead guard’s grip was unnecessarily rough as he hauled me upright. “Move.”

By dusk, the walls of my chamber had become a suffocating cage.

I paced the same four desperate steps until the sconces dimmed to dying embers, heart thundering like war drums behind my ribs. My chamber was completely sealed now—windows barred with iron blessed by temple priests, door locked with three separate mechanisms. Magic laced into the very air made my skin crawl with each breath.

No word from Sariah. No message from allies. No sign of Hector.

Until I heard his name whispered like a curse.

A conversation drifted up through the floor from the guards stationed outside my door.

“They’re preparing the ritual chamber,” someone muttered in hushed, fearful tones. “The cleansing spell. For Lord Hector tonight.”

“About time. Can’t have Alphas compromised by manipulative Luna Brides.”

“Heard she used blood magic. Ancient stuff. Real dangerous.”

I rushed to the door and slammed both fists against it until my knuckles split and bled. “You bastards! You can’t do this to him—he didn’t touch me! He never laid a finger on me!”

Silence answered like a tomb.

But the truth had stopped mattering the moment Cressa opened her lying mouth.

They weren’t after sin or misconduct.

They were engineering separation—tearing apart whatever bond existed between Hector and me before it could threaten their carefully constructed system.

The mirror in my chamber flared brilliant blue just past midnight.

I hadn’t touched it—the scrying glass activated entirely on its own, magic rippling across its surface like disturbed water.

A projection shimmered to life before me, clear as if I stood in the room myself. Hector. Bare-chested and defiant. Standing in the sacred purification chamber with binding runes circling his wrists, throat, and chest like chains of liquid fire.

High Matron Ivera stepped forward, her voice echoing off stone walls. “Do you, Lord Hector Veylor, consent to magical bond cleansing and purification of your Alpha essence?”

“I don’t consent to anything,” he growled, muscles straining against the mystical restraints. “But you’ll force it anyway, won’t you?”

She raised her palm, power crackling between her fingers. “Begin the ritual.”

Six Elders began chanting in the old tongue. Golden spell-work ignited like captured sunlight, curling like serpentine mist toward his chest. The magic hovered over his heart, pulsing with cleansing energy…

Then recoiled violently. Sparks flew as if the spell had struck lightning itself.

One of the mages gasped audibly. “The magic… it rejected him completely.”

“What do you mean rejected?” Ivera’s voice sharpened to a razor’s edge.

“The bond between them—it’s not false or artificially created. It wasn’t summoned by forbidden magic or forged through manipulation. It’s naturally imprinted. Soul-deep. The cleansing ritual can’t touch it because there’s nothing unnatural to cleanse.”

The chamber fell deathly quiet. Even the torches seemed to flicker with tension.

Then High Matron Ivera straightened, her face a mask of cold calculation. “Mark the official record: Lord Veylor has been successfully cleansed of all foreign magical influence.”

I flinched as if slapped. “What—no! They all saw it! They witnessed the magic reject him!”

But they had already decided on their lie. The projection cut to darkness.

The next morning, they dressed me like a mourning doll prepared for burial.

Gray silks that hung loose on my frame. Bare feet against cold stone. No jewelry, no adornment, no dignity.

“Why this particular humiliation?” I asked the silent handmaid as she braided my hair with rough, uncaring fingers.

She glanced nervously toward the door before whispering, “To show the other Luna Brides that you’ve been… properly humbled.”

Humbled. What a delicate word for systematically broken.

***

The Grand Rotunda glittered like an elaborate tomb when they led me in.

Every heir, every Elder, every person of influence in the kingdom had gathered to witness my public disgrace. I walked alone down the center aisle, chains rattling with each measured step. My head remained high despite everything—they could force my body into submission, but they couldn’t touch my spirit.

Until I reached the center of the rotunda.

“Kneel before the Council,” High Matron Ivera barked like a trained hound.

I didn’t move.

She nodded curtly at the guards flanking me.

They forced me down hard enough that marble cracked beneath my knees. Pain shot up my legs, but I bit back any sound of distress.

“Lyssira Fowler has violated the sacred Selection Code through magical manipulation and corruption of Alpha bonds,” Ivera declared to the assembled crowd. “She stands before you as a warning to others who would seek to subvert our ancient ways.”

I searched the crowd desperately until I found him.

Hector stood near the back, every muscle coiled with barely restrained violence. Silent. Tense. Ready to explode into action.

Our eyes locked across the sea of faces.

I whispered, barely audible even to myself. “Why didn’t you deny their accusations?”

His voice carried despite the distance, ice-cold but somehow burning. “Because if I had, they would have hurt you worse.”

I saw the storm raging beneath his controlled exterior—the careful mask he wore to protect us both from something even more terrible than public humiliation.

They paraded me before the assembly in chains. Displayed me like a cautionary tale made flesh. Told every Luna Bride present that I had failed to submit properly to the natural order.

Then, without ceremony or explanation, they released me.

No formal sentence. No official verdict. No resolution.

Just shame worn like a brand. And shackles that would follow me forever.

—–

That night, I sat by my barred window until stars blurred into smoke through my tears.

A soft knock interrupted my vigil—too gentle to be official protocol.

I crept to the door and opened it carefully.

The hallway stood empty.

Only a worn leather satchel waited on the floor. Ancient hide marked with a faded sun sigil I recognized from childhood dreams.

My breath caught in my throat.

Inside the satchel—my mother’s journal. The one she had been buried with fifteen years ago.

My hands trembled as I opened it. Pages of herb lore. Moon cycle calculations. Notes written in her careful script about bloodline magic. A drawing of me as a small child, curled safe in her lap while she sang lullabies.

One page was marked with dried red thread, as if someone had wanted me to find it quickly.

“If the Luna seal awakens in her blood, she must choose between the crown that would cage her… or the bond that would free her.”