After the Tenth Bond Break: I Became the Luna of the Shadowfang Alpha novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Tenth Rite
In front of the whole Greywater Pack, Carson breaks their bond for the tenth time with June at his side, and Danica tells him not to mend it. A call from the Alpha of the Shadowfang Pack, a boy she once hid, ends the chapter.
Three hundred wolves stood in the Moon Stone ring at Greywater and watched my mate break our bond for the tenth time.
Carson spoke the words slowly and carefully, the way he did every time, like a man carrying something full.
"By the moon that joined us, I release this bond."
It felt like a rope pulled out through my chest.
I went to one knee on the cold stone and put my hand flat on the ground to stay upright.
Nobody gasped, because they had seen it nine times before.
A boy near the front held up his phone to film it.
June stood at Carson's shoulder in pressed white healer's linen.
It had been hemmed to her length last week, and I had held the pins.
She crouched beside me and put a shawl around my shoulders.
"Breathe, Dani," she said. "You know it passes."
Carson looked down at me.
He was grey in the face, the way he was after every rite, and he leaned on the altar to keep his hands from shaking.
"It's the same as the others," he said, quietly this time, just for me. "June's wolf needs the rite, the pack needs to see it, and I will mend it at the new moon. Nothing changes."
Nine times he had said it.
Nine times I had gone home and burned with fever for a day while June brought me tea and told me the bond was starving and only a mend would cure it.
Nine times I had been over it by morning, and he had been in bed for three days.
The pack called that the strain of the rite on a loving Alpha.
I had called it that too.
"This time is a little different," Carson said.
He cleared his throat for the rows behind him.
"The Council wants the Greywater Luna chosen before winter, and June has stood by this pack longer than any of us. So tonight I ask Danica to step aside."
He said it kindly, with a small smile.
June put her hand over her mouth.
"Carson, she's hurting," she said. "Give her a minute."
Somebody in the crowd called out, "Move on, Danica!"
A few people laughed.
The ring's basin of moon-water sat on the altar, full to the rim.
It was the pack's job to carry it down to the creek after every rite, and it took two men to lift it.
I got up off my knee.
I picked the basin up in both hands and carried it down the steps myself.
I did not feel the weight at all.
Behind me the laughing stopped.
I set it down at the edge of the stone and turned around.
Carson was staring at my hands.
"Put that down," he said, though I already had. "Danica, we'll talk at home. You'll mend it with me at the new moon, like always."
"No," I said.
"You'll feel better by morning."
"Don't mend it."
The whole ring went quiet.
June's face stayed soft, and she took one step toward me with the tea flask already in her hand.
"Dani, you don't mean that. You're in pain."
"I'm in no pain at all," I said, and found that it was true.
Carson came down two steps and lowered his voice again.
"You have nowhere to go. Your father's farm is sold. Your whole life is here. Be sensible."
He was right that I had nowhere to go.
I had spent eleven months making myself small enough to fit in his house, and nine of them making room for June.
I looked at the boy with the phone and said, loud enough for his microphone, "Carson Lysle of Greywater has broken our bond ten times. I'm done. Do not mend it."
Carson's mouth opened.
The tenth thread, the one he had cut that night, did not snap back to me the way the others had.
It lay there cut, and I felt it close.
So I stepped out of the ring.
I walked past the pack, and nobody touched me.
My phone buzzed in my jacket pocket before I reached the road.
It was a number I didn't know, from far north.
I answered and said nothing.
A man's voice came through, low and a little rough.
"Danica Fontana. You told me once to say the name of the pack I came back with."
My knees almost went again.
"It's Shadowfang," he said. "Tell me where to meet you."
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