The Luna Queen's Rebirth (Ellie and Dominic) novel Chapter 436

Chapter 436

Ellie’s POV

Word of the Alpha King’s visit reached my father on a Wednesday, and by Thursday morning it felt like the whole village had gotten the memo.

The pack was practically in a frenzy by the time the news came out. This was a huge deal, since Goldenveil had only recently been reinstated as a pack. Everyone was rushing around, ensuring their homes and shops and their neighbors’ homes and shops were utterly perfect, not a single speck of dust on anything, wanting to make a good impression for the Alpha King.

My father, for his part, took it in stride. He had a list that he was working through methodically accommodations for Monroe’s party, a formal dinner, a tour of the village, a review of the pack’s recent census data.

The clinic was especially quiet with everyone too busy preparing for the party to care about sniffles, so I made my way up to my father’s house that evening and asked him what I could do to help.

He looked up from behind his desk, where he was currently surrounded by paperwork. “How are you with logistics?”

“Decent enough.”

He pushed half the list across the table.

I decided, as I got to work helping my father prepare, that I was not going to think about the fact that Dominic was on the tour. I was going to be practical and useful and focus on what actually needed doing, and I was absolutely not going to count the days between now and the last stop on the schedule.

I counted them anyway. Twelve days, give or take, depending on travel conditions.

Bastian found us the next morning in the meeting house, going through the seating arrangements for the formal dinner. He walked in, looked at the papers spread across the table, and then looked at me.

“What’s she doing here?” he asked my father.

“Helping,” Terence said, without looking up.

Bastian pulled out the chair across from me and sat down. “I already started on the seating plan last night.”

“So did I,” I said. “We can compare.”

We compared. They were nearly identical, except Bastian had put Monroe at the head of the table and I’d put my father there, where the host belonged. I pointed that out as neutrally as I could, and he looked at both versions for a moment, said nothing, and wrote my father’s name at the head of the table on the final copy.

It wasn’t an apology or anything close to one. But I’d take it.

We were almost done when Eli appeared in the doorway in his coat and boots with a drawing clutched in both hands.

“For the King,” he announced, and held it out to my father.

Terence studied it with great seriousness. “Ah. This is excellent work.”

“I know.” Eli turned and looked at me. “You can have one too if you want.”

“I would love one.”

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He grinned, flashing two missing teeth right in front, and climbed up into the chair beside mine and pulled a folded piece of paper from his coat pocket. He smoothed it out on the table in front of me. It was a drawing of what I assumed was the village: a large yellow circle overhead, a building, and several stick figures standing outside it.

“That’s you,” he said, pointing to one of them. It had a scribble of dark hair and was notably taller than the rest.

Below the fold on page three was a photograph. Dominic at some kind of outdoor event, shaking hands with an older man, smiling a perfect campaign smile. He looked handsome and happy, and the sight of him after so long made my heart race a little, although I tried to quell it.

My eyes went, then to the figure that was standing beside him in the picture. It was a woman in a veil. She looked like some kind of religious follower. That didn’t really strike me as all that odd; there were some priestesses around the packs who wore some similar veils. The tradition was dying out from the old days but it was still there in some of the older packs.

It was the headline that got me.

“Is the mysterious veiled woman by candidate Dominic’s side his future Luna?”

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Future Luna.

I knew I shouldn’t care. We were divorced, and we both had lives to get back to. The almost-kiss just before he’d left Goldenveil had been just that: an almost-kiss. Not a real one, not a promise. Not anything to dwell on, although, Goddess knew, a part of me had been naively thinking of it every night since he’d left.

And yet, as I read that headline three times over, I couldn’t help but feel that saddening sensation washing over me. As if I had gotten my hopes up despite my best efforts, and now they were being squashed by the bitter reality of divorce papers and a finger that was still pale around the spot where a ring had once sat, however briefly.

My heart sank as the implications washed over me, and suddenly, all hope I’d felt of rekindling what we’d once had, no matter how foolish the very notion had seemed even from the beginning, began to fade.

Was this the end for us? Officially?

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