Stalked by the Phantom Alpha

Sibyl's POV

Every chandelier in the Holloway ballroom was lit tonight, and the light fell on two hundred wolves in formal dress, and every pair of eyes in the room pointed at the same place.

That place was the center of the floor, where Cecilia Holloway stood in ivory silk with her hair set in soft waves while guests crowded in from every side to be seen near her.

I stood by the third column with my back against the plaster and my hands at my sides.

My dress did not fit. The shoulders sat an inch too wide and the waist hung loose by half a palm. Cold air came down from the vent above the gallery and went under the hem, so I pressed my arms flat against the inside of the silk. My skin did not hold heat the way theirs did. That was one of the smaller things the wolfsbane took.

Two women stopped behind the column, close enough that I heard them.

"The one by the pillar. Who is she?"

"Nobody. They adopted her out of a shelter when the real daughter went missing."

"She is a half-blood with no wolf in it at all, and a mute on top of that. Now the real daughter is home. Let us see what she does with herself."

Conrad was ten feet away by then with one hand flat on his jacket button.

"Twelve years," he said. "Twelve years we waited. And she walked back through that door on her own two feet."

"Mr. Holloway." An older man took his hand. "You must be a proud father tonight."

"Prouder than I can say." Conrad lowered his voice the way he did when he wanted a room to lean in. "We did not lose a daughter. We lent one to the world for a while, and the world gave her back better than we sent her."

The man laughed and clapped his shoulder. "Well said."

Margot moved through the guests half a step behind Cecilia with her chin lifted and one hand resting on her daughter's shoulder. She stopped at a group of three women and let them look first.

"You are too kind," she said. "Truly. She came back to us unmarked. That was all I ever asked for."

"She has your face," one of them said.

"She has her father's patience." Margot smoothed a strand of Cecilia's hair without looking at it. "Gentle. Quiet. She never once raised her voice in this house."

They passed within three feet of me. Neither of them turned their head.

There was no punishment in any of it. No speech, no correction, no hand on my arm. There was only the way they had stopped saying my name out loud, as though it had become an address that no longer existed.

A man stepped on my hem and did not stop. I opened my mouth to say excuse me. My throat gave up breath and nothing else. There had been no sound in it since I was fourteen.

Damian was supposed to be beside me.

He is my fiancé.

He had walked over when the doors opened. He stood at my shoulder for a while with a glass of red in his hand and nothing to say.

Then the guests began to look.

They looked at my face. They looked at the old dress. Then they looked at him, and he felt every pair of eyes land.

His jaw pulled tight. His knuckles went white around the stem of the glass and turned it slowly. Once. Twice. Three times.

He did not leave. He did not come closer either. He moved a few inches to his left, then a few more, until the space between our shoulders was wide enough to walk through.

He did not look at me once.

Across the room, Conrad lifted two fingers toward the center of the hall.

Damian saw it before I did.

He set his glass down on a passing tray. He straightened his jacket and ran one thumb along the seam of his pocket. He did not hesitate and he did not turn his head to tell me anything at all.

He walked.

Cecilia was already coming out of the crowd with a smile ready. Damian put his hand high between her shoulder blades and steered her into the open space, and he did it smoothly, the way a man does a thing he has decided to be good at.

Conrad met them there and turned to the three elders by the fireplace. "Gentlemen. My daughter, and Mr. Thorne. I believe you have met her parents."

"We have heard the story," one of them said. "Twelve years."

"Twelve years," Conrad agreed. "And not one night of it wasted."

Damian laughed at something. His hand had not moved from her back. He did not look over his shoulder. Not once.

I noticed the keys a moment later. Black fob, silver ring, still on the table beside the column.

I bent and picked them up. I took half a step after him. Then another.

I went between two groups of guests with the keys closed in my fist. By the time I reached the edge of the center he was already inside it. Three elders, then Conrad, then the two of them shoulder to shoulder, and there was no way through.

I raised the keys to shoulder height. The ring caught the chandelier light.

Nobody turned.

"Excuse me," a woman said, and stepped around me. "You are in the way of the tray."

I stood there with my arm up. I opened my mouth. My throat gave up air and nothing else.

I stepped back out of the light and let the crowd close in front of me again.

The keys had cut a small ridge into my palm. I held them tighter until the ridge became a hurt. The chandeliers kept shining. The glasses kept touching. At the far end of the hall men kept laughing.

Damian's hand was still on her back.

My eyes burned. I pressed my nails into my own hand, one by one, until the skin went white around them.

My fiancé walked another woman into the center of that room with his palm flat on her spine, and I stood at the edge of the crowd with his keys in my fist and no voice to call him back with.