Reborn To Reject My Alpha And Watch His World Burn Chapter 02
Everyone craned their necks to look inside.
The bed was a mess. Wineglasses and Nolan’s coat lay scattered across the carpet. The air was thick with the lingering scent of sex.
But there was no second woman in the room.
The staff door at the back of the suite stood ajar, leading straight to a service elevator. Someone had left before the Royal Guard sealed off the east wing.
I looked up at Nolan.
The panic in his eyes had already vanished, replaced by cold mockery.
“Iris, I know you’re afraid the royal family will hold you accountable. That’s why you’re too scared to admit it.”
He dropped to one knee before Prince Cedric, positioning himself in front of me in a mockery of a protective stance.
“Please, Your Highness, punish me. I indulged my Luna too much, and that is why she acted out in such an inappropriate place.”
Several younger guests were immediately moved by his performance.
“How much longer is Alpha Nolan supposed to cover for her?”
“She’s Ironridge’s Luna, and she pulled something like this at the Royal Castle. She doesn’t deserve to represent a Pack.”
“Who knows if she throws herself at other men like this, too.”
Prince Cedric took a step back, the look he gave me now laced with disgust.
“Iris, do you have anything else to say for yourself?”
The insults crashed down around me like a tidal wave.
Even having lived through it once, I still felt suffocated.
Was I really going to die a second time, branded with a crime that was never mine?
No.
I had betrayed no one. Why should I be the one forced to bear the weight of it all?
My gaze swept the room, and then I saw it—a small glint of light near the foot of the bed.
I strode inside and bent to pick up a blue diamond hairpin from the carpet.
Serena had been wearing it at the start of the banquet. The royal media’s arrival photos would prove it.
I tightened my grip on the pin and returned to stand before Prince Cedric.
“Your Highness, this isn’t mine.”
“It belongs to Serena Hale—Lucas Hale’s widow. Nolan’s late brother. The woman in the room with Nolan was her.”
The corridor went dead silent.
Lucas had once been Ironridge’s heir apparent and commander of the northern border Pack coalition. Three years ago, he died fighting off a rogue attack, saving several border towns in the process. Nolan had only taken over as Alpha of Ironridge after his brother’s death.
Serena had originally come from the Rivermark Pack. After she mated Lucas, she joined Ironridge, and after his death, she received royal protection as the widow of a fallen war hero. She even founded a charity to aid the families of fallen Pack warriors. King Adrian himself had publicly praised her as loyal and strong.
If she had been carrying on an affair with her dead husband’s brother, then I wasn’t the only one who had been deceived—the entire Ironridge Pack and the royal family had been, as well.
I handed the hairpin to the Royal Guard.
“The media photos from the entrance will prove it. Just compare them and you’ll know—”
“No!”
A choked sob echoed from the far end of the corridor.
Serena came running over, looking flustered. She had changed her gown and redone her hair, but a telltale sheen of sweat glistened at her temple.
She collapsed to her knees before Prince Cedric, trembling as she cried.
“Your Highness, that hairpin is mine, but Iris borrowed it from me three days ago.”
She lifted tear-filled eyes to me.
“Iris, I know you’ve never liked me living in the Alpha residence, and you don’t like that the Pack still protects me. But where else am I supposed to go?”
“I wish Lucas had come back alive, too. I wish I didn’t have to rely on his Pack to survive. Why are you framing Nolan and me like this?”
Then she scrambled to her feet and threw herself toward a stone pillar.
“If everyone truly believes I betrayed Lucas, then I’d rather die right here to prove my innocence!”
Nolan caught her just in time, but her forehead still struck the stone hard enough to split the skin. Blood trickled down her pale face, making her look heartbreakingly pitiful.
Over Nolan’s shoulder, she shot me a look, and in her eyes flashed a familiar, smug satisfaction.
I was shaking with rage.
“Your Highness, she’s lying. If you compare her arrival photos with the staff passage access logs—”
*Smack!*
Nolan’s slap snapped my head to the side.
“That’s enough!” he snarled, all pretense of calm gone.
“Iris Dalton, do you really have to make this so ugly?”
“You were the one who lost control at a royal banquet, and now you’re trying to drive Lucas’s widow to her death. Will you only be satisfied when you see her dead?”
Serena’s personal assistant, Chloe, rushed out from the crowd.
“I can prove it. Three days ago, Iris took the hairpin herself. Serena was with me the entire evening. She never entered that suite.”
Nolan’s security aide immediately spoke up as well. “I also saw Luna Iris lead Alpha Nolan out of the banquet hall. She told us no one was to follow.”
One by one, several members of the Ironridge entourage chimed in.
They didn’t kneel. They didn’t swear any ancient oaths. They simply stood there before the royal guests and the Guard and delivered one carefully rehearsed lie after another.
I held my burning cheek and stood alone in the middle of them.
In my last life, I had trusted these people as the most steadfast members of my Pack.
Now they were all working together to shove me into an abyss.
“That’s not what happened,” I said, my voice shaking. I looked straight at Prince Cedric.
“Please check the records. The hairpin has nothing to do with me, and Serena could not have been in the banquet hall the entire time.”
“I can prove it.”
An older woman’s voice cut through the crowd.
Nolan’s mother, Vivian Pierce, Ironridge’s former Luna, made her way over with the help of an attendant. She glanced at me and let out a weary sigh.