Elaris POV
The bond burned like a roaring fire in me. It wrapped around my heart like invisible chains, tugging me towards them—Karl, Darius, and Torren, the very men that had just damned me to exile.
I gasped, and I clutched my chest, feeling the fire that had ignited beneath my ribs, flaring hotter.
Torren looked to me, eyes dazed, hand still clutching his chest tight. "No! No!" he staggered back from the conference table, yelling. "I cannot be bound to a traitor's daughter, I cannot."
He shook his head violently as if to reject what he felt.
"Let her go." Karl's voice cut through the hall, sharp as a blade, silencing Torren's yell.
It was then that I realized I was already on my feet and pulled up the guards.
I shook my head, shaking off the remnant shock in my system. I glanced around to see that Mom and Dad had been taken away. Only Nathaniel remained. He looked away from me to the ground, trembling, too scared to look up.
"Let her go," Karl repeated.
The guards hesitated, hands still locked around my arms. They looked to the Elders for guidance. A hard stare from the chief elder called for them to hold on, but at Karl's harder glaring, they dropped me like I was hot coal.
Karl stepped forward, as the future Alpha of the Moonblood pack, tall and cold as winter, his golden eyes unreadable. Those same eyes that had once looked at me with love now looked at me as if I were a stranger, even as our bond pulled at me so hard I nearly collapsed.
"Karl…" I whispered.
His jaw tightened. For a heartbeat, something raw flickered in his eyes—pain, longing, love. I couldn't say. He sniffed softly and blinked, and then it vanished.
"She is no longer Moonblood," he said. "She is the daughter of a traitor, exiled from the pack. Hence, I reject her."
The words struck harder than any blow, and with the bond tugging at my veins, pulling me to him, my wolf screaming for him, it hit harder.
I gasped out in pain, my insides twisting themselves tightly inside of me.
Torren laughed bitterly. "The Moon Goddess fucking had a twisted sense of humor. Of all the women in the damn world… why would she bind us to her? Her?" he yelled, speaking more to himself than he was doing to me or anyone in the room.
He stalked toward me, his green eyes blazing with fury and grief. The bond throbbed between us, thick and suffocating.
"I can feel you," he snarled, still clutching his chest as if about to rip it out of him. "In my blood. In my bones. And I hate it, Ela. You are the fucking traitor's daughter, I shouldn't want you."
My throat tightened, so many lumps settling there, and no amount of swallowing helped push them down.
The words were heavy on my lips. "Torren, please—"
"Don't." His voice cracked. "Don't you dare say my name like you belong to me. You are nothing to me."
Darius stood silent behind them, his gaze fixed on the floor, his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles were white.
But he did nothing. Perhaps like his brothers, he'd rejected me too.
I knew I stood no chance of becoming their Luna, but if they could choose me, I would be able to stay with them as my mates, love and be loved by them, and I would be able to see Mother and Father, too, and even protect Nathaniel better. My future hung firmly on their decisions.
I stared expectantly at their faces, begging and pleading with my eyes, hoping that they would choose me.
Karl cut off from my gaze, and he turned to the council. "The Moon Goddess's bond changes nothing." He said. "She has been sentenced to exile. We will not defy the pack for a traitor's child."
My heart shattered, the pieces sinking into the hollow depth of my stomach.
"You're my mate," I whispered, tears sliding down my cheeks before I had a chance to stop it. "The three of you are. Can't you feel it like I do?"
Karl's eyes burned. "I feel it," he said quietly. "And that's the problem. I can feel it when I don't want to." his cold expression held back on his disgust at our bond, but his eyes burned with it.
"I can fucking feel it too." Torren slammed his fist into the wall, stone cracking beneath his knuckles. "And this is your fault, Ela," he muttered. "All of it. If you hadn't been born to the traitor—"
"Enough," Darius suddenly said.
Everyone turned sharply to him, even the elders, even me. There was a new, strange, and strong note to his voice that iced the air. Silence settled in the hall with a weight so fragile that no one dared shatter it.
His eyes lifted to meet mine as he walked around the conference table, each step imprinting itself in the air, loud, deliberate, and jarring through the silence.
Anxiety devoured cruelly at my insides, heartbeat thrumming loudly against my ears as I watched him make his way to me.
He snatched my wrist and pulled me away from the guards. I collided right into his chest, and he held me tight to me, not just choosing me, but claiming me as his.
A fire unlike I had ever known before skidded up my skin, just being this close to him, just feeling his warmth wrapping around me.
His warm breath beat against my shoulder as he sniffed my hair.
"This is preposterous, Alpha Prince Darius, you certainly can't choose her. She has been exiled, which means she has been rejected by the pack. She can no longer stay here—" The head elder roared from the conference table.
"She doesn't have to stay," Darius muttered.
He looked to the hall, lazy, slow, and deliberate as if savouring the tension tangible in the air. For a moment, I caught a somewhat evil smirk claim his lips, but it disappeared so fast, like it never even existed.
I couldn't tell why, but that scared me silly for a moment. It looked almost like he was scheming something?
My nerves were still slightly frayed when Karl spoke. "What do you mean?" he asked, voice cold as always, though his gaze, just like Torren's, was focused entirely on Darius grip of my waist, his eyes heating up into balls of fire in his head.
Darius smiled at Karl and Torren, and then, there was that smirk again, that smirk that made it look almost as if he was enjoying the look on their faces.
"I mean…" Darius shifted to everyone in the hall now. "...I mean, I am choosing her, and if she cannot stay here with us, then I will have to leave with her."
"Are you out of your mind?" Torren yelled.
Torren words died to a grunt at a raise of tug of Karl's head. He kept mumbling so many obscenities beneath his breath.
Karl folded his arms slowly over his chest. "I don't think you have thought this through, brother. Once you leave the manor with a woman who has been rejected by the pack, you cease to be a prince in this palace. You become an ordinary member of this pack, you become banished with her."
"No, you can't do this, Darius," I said, trying to pull away from his grip. As much as I would want him to choose me, I wouldn't want him to do it at the expense of his throne. "You can't do this, Darius, you can't—"
"I can, Ela." He said. He steadied his grip on my waist, and I couldn't pull away.
He grinned as he looked up to Karl and Torren, and the elders, turning on the same spot, so he could stare into everyone's eyes. "Today, I renounce my position as an Alpha prince of the Moonblood pack and remove myself from the royal court, for as long as Elaris Vance continued to be exiled, I will also be."
"We can't accept that, Darius." Karl snarled. And for the first time, I saw his mask of impassivity shatter.
Torren charged forward, flexing his muscles menacingly in readiness for a fight. "Yes, we can't," he supported.
"We stand on that same position." The head elder bellowed, adjusting himself to a definitive posture.
"Well…" Darius rowed his head to the side. "As long as she is exiled and is no longer of this pack, then your opinions on what we do do not matter."
Karl tried to counter, but his chin only vibrated. No words spilled out. He glared at Darius's grip on my waist again, lips parted again, but still not even a word.
Eventually, he turned around, grunting with the whole of his jaw, and he walked away, Torren calling after him, while the elders just stood back and watched, confused.
"Let's go, Ela." Darius smiled down at me and began walking me down the hall to a life I had no idea about. Yet, for a strange reason, I wasn't really scared of what the future holds, I was scared of something more. Of that same evil smirk that was beginning to curl around Darius lips as he lead me out. I couldn't shake the feeling he was up to something.