~LYRA'S POV~
The dining hall was loud in the morning. Loud and full and completely indifferent to me.
I found my way to the Luna's table without anyone telling me where it was. I'd watched last night long enough to know the layout. The long table near the window, the one with the carved chair at the end. That was my seat now, apparently. I sat down, straightened my back, and reached for the bread basket.
Three women walked past.
Not quickly, not like they were rushing somewhere. Just... past. Like the chair was empty. Like I wasn't sitting directly in front of them. One of them glanced at me for half a second, then looked away, and it was the kind of look that said she'd made a decision before she even saw my face.
I pulled a piece of bread off the loaf and kept my expression neutral.
From somewhere behind me, I heard a voice pitched just loud enough to carry.
"She's not even shifted. What kind of Luna can't even find her own wolf?"
A second voice laughed. Low and short, the kind of laugh that isn't really about finding something funny. "Ryland's losing it. Bringing home a human and calling her Luna. What's next?"
I chewed my bread slowly and stared out the window.
I'd heard worse. I'd heard it from people who looked me in the eye while they said it, people who wanted to see it land. At least these ones had the decency to aim at my back. Small mercies.
But it still lodged somewhere under my ribs and stayed there, which I hated.
—
I found out about the conversation with Ryland's Beta by accident.
I was heading back from the kitchens with a cup of tea when I heard voices in the corridor just around the corner. I recognized Ryland's first. Then the other one, lower and more clipped. His Beta, Cade. I'd seen him briefly last night. Big shoulders, serious face, the kind of man who looked like he'd never smiled in a professional setting.
I stopped walking. Not to eavesdrop. I just didn't want to walk into the middle of whatever it was.
"The pack won't respect a Luna who has no wolf," Cade said. "You're asking them to follow someone they can't even sense. You know how this works. They follow strength. They follow what they can feel. Right now, they can't feel her at all."
"She will shift," Ryland said. His voice was firm. Not angry, not defensive. Just settled, like it wasn't a debate.
"You don't know that."
"I'd stake my life on it."
A pause. "You might be staking theirs."
I didn't wait to hear the rest. I turned around and went back the way I came, taking the long route to nowhere in particular, just walking until the tightness in my chest had somewhere to go.
The thing was, Cade wasn't wrong. That was the part I couldn't argue with. He was saying out loud what every person in that dining hall had been thinking since last night. I had no wolf. I had no power anyone could sense or measure or point to. All I had was a bond that nobody fully understood and an Alpha willing to defend something he couldn't prove.
I didn't want to be something Ryland had to defend.
I just didn't know yet how to be anything else.
—
The market was held in an open courtyard near the pack's eastern gate. Stalls lined the walls and the smell of fresh bread mixed with leather and woodsmoke. Ryland had suggested I walk through it this morning, said it would help me get familiar with the pack's rhythm.
What he probably didn't anticipate was the rhythm including people like the two women near the spice stall.
I saw them clock me from three stalls away. They were about my age, both in Silverclaw colors, both carrying that specific expression of people who've already decided they don't like you and are just waiting for an opportunity.
I told myself to walk past. Keep moving. Don't give them a reason.
I was holding a small wooden tray with a few items I'd picked up, just bread rolls and a jar of something amber-colored that the vendor had pressed into my hands with a nervous smile. The tray wasn't heavy. There was no reason for me to fumble it.
The taller woman's shoulder caught mine as she walked by, and the tray went sideways. Everything scattered across the stone. The bread rolled. The jar skidded but didn't break. The tray clattered loud enough that people nearby turned to look.
She didn't stop walking. Her friend did, just long enough to smile at me. Not even a mean smile. Worse than that. A bored one, like this had been easy.
I crouched down and picked everything up. One item at a time. Unhurried.
Then I stood, and I looked at the one who'd stayed behind. Just looked at her. Didn't say anything, didn't move, didn't blink. I just held her gaze and waited.
She held it back for maybe three seconds. Then she looked away first, turned, and followed her friend.
I exhaled through my nose. Tiny victory. I took it anyway. You learn to collect the small ones when the big ones aren't available yet.
"You handled that well."
I turned. Eren was leaning against the doorway of the building directly to my left, arms folded, watching me with those unreadable golden eyes. I had no idea how long he'd been standing there.
"I've had practice," I said.
"I know." He pushed off the wall and fell into step beside me without asking if that was alright. "That's the problem. You shouldn't have had to."
I slowed slightly, because I hadn't expected that. Kael's version of noticing me came with guilt attached. Ryland's came with protectiveness. This was something else. Not ownership. Not pity. Just a plain observation, stated simply, with no strings I could immediately identify.
I didn't know what to do with it.
"Most people lead with 'you're strong' or 'you'll be fine,'" I said. "You went a different direction."
"Those things might also be true," Eren said.
"But they're not what I was thinking."
We walked for a few steps in silence.
"What were you thinking?" I asked, and I wasn't sure why I asked it.
He was quiet for a moment, like he was choosing the words carefully rather than just reaching for the easiest ones.
"I was thinking that someone who's been through what you've been through, and still walks into a room full of people who don't want her, and still holds her head straight, and still refuses to flinch in front of women half-trying to humiliate her…" He paused.
"That's not just strength. That's something that got built the hard way. And it shouldn't have been."
I looked straight ahead. "You sound like you know something about that."
"Maybe," he said. Nothing more.
We reached the end of the market corridor, and he stopped there at the edge where the courtyard opened back out into the main pack grounds. He didn't follow me past that point, just stood with his hands loose at his sides.
"For what it's worth," he said, "the ones who don't want you here are always the ones who feel the ground shifting under their feet.
They're not reacting to who you are. They're reacting to what you mean."
"And what do I mean?" I asked.
He looked at me for a moment, gold eyes steady. "Change," he said. "Which is terrifying for people who built their comfort on things staying exactly as they were."
He turned and walked back through the market without waiting for my response, disappearing between two stalls like he'd simply decided the conversation was finished.
I stood at the edge of the courtyard for a moment, the bread rolls tucked under my arm and the amber jar in my hand, the morning sun cutting sideways across the stone.
He was the first person in any of this, in any pack, in any room, who had said something that didn't circle back to what I was to them.
He'd just said it like it was a fact. Simple. Offered and then left alone.