The silence that followed Sterling's departure was a heavy, suffocating thing. Lyraen still stood with his back rigid, the silver locket glinting cruelly in his hand. Usagi, however, felt a surge of fierce, protective anger a deep, primal response that eclipsed her fear.
"You can't do that!" Usagi's voice rang out, sharp and high. She rushed to him, grabbing his arm. "You can't dismiss him! That is not fair, Lyraen! You've jumped to a terrible conclusion!"
Lyraen turned, his face etched with pain and confusion. "Not fair? Usagi, he deliberately misled you! He insinuated a closeness that doesn't exist to sow discord! He has betrayed my trust and yours! I saw the engraving, I heard his flimsy excuse it doesn't matter if you misunderstood; he created the opportunity for that misunderstanding!"
"But I told you he's my friend!" she insisted, shaking his arm. "My only friend here, besides you! He was hurt, Lyraen! He confessed to me that he loved the memory of me, but he explicitly vowed his loyalty to us both! He didn't send a gift, he offered comfort, and I was the one who misinterpreted his action as coming from you! Why is it so impossible for you to believe that a wolf can simply be loyal and kind?"
Lyraen looked down at her, his golden eyes blazing with a mixture of love, possessiveness, and genuine heartbreak. "Because not all wolves are like me, Usagi! And because a butler does not gift the Queen a token of intimacy without motive! You are too gentle, too pure! You don't see the politics, the danger in this place!" He shook his head slowly, his voice dropping to a heartbroken murmur. "I am trying to protect you from the wolves who circle our marriage, and yet you fight me to protect the one I see closest to the door." Usagi stepped back, the full weight of the unfairness crushing her spirit. She realized in that agonizing moment that Lyraen's love, while immense, was tangled with the heavy chains of a royal upbringing and the territorial instincts of his wolf. He couldn't separate a simple act of friendship from an act of treason. She understood his fear, but she could not abide the injustice.
"Then you leave me no choice," Usagi said, her voice hollow. The happy anticipation of her new life, of the beautiful castle and her loving husband, crumbled. The sheer terror of being confined and having her few connections severed was unbearable. She had lost her first friend once, and she wouldn't allow Lyraen's jealousy to sever that bond again, especially not when the loss would be so profound and so entirely undeserved.She looked at her husband, the man whose protection she craved, and whose possessiveness now felt like a cage. "I need space, Lyraen," she declared, her eyes stinging with unshed tears. "I cannot stay here tonight. Not while you treat my loyalty and Sterling's honor with such contempt."
Lyraen's expression was a mask of shock and wounded pride. "Usagi, what are you saying? You're going to leave me because of my butler?"
"I am leaving you because you have punished an innocent man without proof, and you have chosen suspicion over my word," she corrected, her voice firm despite the ache in her chest. "I need to breathe. I need to be somewhere that doesn't feel like a gilded cage built on baseless mistrust."
She made a sudden, difficult decision, the only one that felt right to her wild heart. She turned away from the grandeur of the room, away from the silk sheets and the royal crests. She grabbed the cloak she had worn on her journey to the castle a simple, dark woolen thing and pulled the hood over her hair.
"I am going to the garden," she stated, not asking for permission, but informing him of her intent. "I am going to shift, and I am going to stay in the woods for a few days. Until you can see clearly. Until you can trust me, and trust that my heart is not swayed by a kind gesture from a loyal friend."
Lyraen finally dropped the locket, the small clatter echoing loudly on the stone floor. He took a desperate step toward her. "Usagi, wait! You can't! It's too dangerous! Luna—"
"I will be safer in the woods, Lyraen, than I am in this room, with this doubt between us," she whispered, her voice breaking. She didn't look back. With swift, determined steps, the Queen of the Wolf Kingdom walked out of her chambers, choosing the cold, honest refuge of the forest over the suffocating warmth of a love that had turned momentarily blind.