The hall had barely emptied before she found me.
I was standing by the dying fire when the side door swung open and Celeste stepped through with the deliberate precision of a woman who'd been waiting for exactly this moment.
She was still beautiful. I hated myself for noticing. Auburn hair caught the firelight like burnished copper, perfect features arranged into an expression that was simultaneously composed and volcanic.
But the softness I'd once thought I saw in her was gone. Maybe it had never been there at all. What remained was something harder, crystallized in the weeks since I'd left for court.
She stopped ten feet from me, arms crossed, chin lifted.
"That was quite the performance," she said, and her voice was silk drawn over broken glass.
"Standing up there, baring your throat to wolves who used to cower when you walked past. Admitting weakness like it's something to be proud of, inviting challenges you're not strong enough to win.” Her face flushed in anger, disappointment, and threat.
“Do you have any idea what you looked like, Theron? You looked like a beaten dog begging for scraps from the table you used to own."
"It wasn't a performance," I said. "It was the truth. Something this pack has been owed for a long time."
"The truth." She laughed, brittle enough to cut.
"The truth is that you humiliated yourself in front of every wolf in Shadowpine, and for what? To prove you've changed? To show them the new, enlightened Theron who feels his feelings and admits his failures? They don't want that. They want an Alpha, and what you gave them tonight was a confession that their Alpha is broken."
I didn't argue, because she wasn't entirely wrong.
She took a step closer, and the firelight caught the sheen in her eyes—not tears, not yet. When she spoke again, the silk was gone from her voice, replaced by something raw and ragged.
"What happens to us, Theron? I stood beside you. Through every political disaster, every public failure, every moment when the pack whispered that their Alpha had lost his mind chasing a woman who didn't want him—I was there."
"I gave you everything I had. My loyalty, my reputation, my future. I let you make me Luna in front of the entire pack, let you claim me as your chosen mate, let myself believe that what we were building was real.” She paused, letting that settle in.
“And now you're standing in front of me with that look on your face, and I already know what you're going to say, so just say it. Have the decency to say it to my face instead of letting me figure it out from a pack meeting."
She deserved to hear it clearly rather than piece it together from implications and avoidance.
"There is no us, Celeste." The words felt like swallowing gravel, but I forced them out whole, unhedged.
"There never really was, and that's my fault—entirely, completely my fault. I chose you because you were safe and convenient and being with you meant I didn't have to confront a bond I didn't understand.”
I see her expressions change, knowing already what I’ve been wanting to say. “I used you as a shield against feelings I wasn't equipped to deal with, and I told myself it was enough, that choosing someone was the same as loving them, and that wasn't fair to either of us."
Celeste's composure fractured. Tears spilled down her cheeks, but the fury in her eyes didn't diminish—if anything, the tears fed it, humiliation and heartbreak alchemizing into something white-hot.
"This is about her," she spat. "About your precious Kira, your lost princess, the one who—"
"This is not about Kira. That bond is broken. The magic is severed. Whatever the false bond made me feel, it's gone, and I'm not ending this because I'm chasing something with her—she's made her choice, and it isn't me. I’m doing this because it’s the truth.”
The tears came freely now, and with them a torrent of words that had been building for weeks.
"I sacrificed everything for you. My pride—do you understand what it cost me to stand beside a man the entire pack knew was obsessed with another woman?”
She stepped back, eyes turning red. “To smile at ceremonies where wolves looked at me with pity because everyone could see I was the consolation prize? My reputation, my future, the alliances my family could have built if I hadn't chained myself to an Alpha who was falling apart."
"You made me Luna, Theron. You stood in front of five hundred wolves and announced that I was yours, that I was chosen, that I mattered. You made me believe every word. And now you're telling me it was nothing? That everything I gave, everything I endured, everything I lost—it all meant nothing?"
"It meant something," I said, and the inadequacy of the words was a physical pain in my chest.
"Just not what either of us pretended it did. And I'm sorry, Celeste. I know that's not enough. I know nothing I say right now is enough, and I know you're not going to believe that my regret is real because I've given you no reason to trust anything I say. But I am sorry."
She backed away fully now, shaking her head slowly, and when she spoke again her voice had dropped to something cold and quiet and infinitely more frightening than her tears.
"You're going to regret this, Theron. Both of you—you and your precious princess. I don't care if the bond is broken, I don't care if you never look at her again.”
I could see the anger burning in her eyes as she spoke. “You destroyed my life, and she was the reason, and I will make sure that both of you understand exactly what that costs. That is not a threat. It's a promise, and unlike yours, mine actually mean something."
She turned and walked out. Didn't run, didn't slam the door—just moved with the controlled, purposeful stride of a woman who'd stopped grieving and started planning.
I stood alone in the empty hall, firelight dying around me. Some wounds don't want healing—they want company, and the only company Celeste was interested in now was the cold, patient kind that comes from knowing exactly who to blame and having nothing left to lose.
I hadn't seen the last of Celeste Redfang. Not by far.