Luna Lola: The Moon Wolf novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Post Nine

Caelen's POV

I let Wynne sleep.

She went to bed at dusk with her mother's box under one arm and a folded chore list in her fist.

She slept on her right side, because her left shoulder still hurt when she lay on it.

I knew that now, and I hated that I knew why.

I hadn't heard what the Beta said to her on the Stone.

I'd stood ten feet away and looked at the view, as I'd promised.

But I saw his face when he finished, and I have watched enough men confess to know the look.

So at midnight I took the truck down to the Black Fir bridge, and I told no one.

I told myself it was to spare her another disappointment if he turned out to be useless.

That was only half true.

The other half was that I wanted to hear it alone, in case it was worse than I could stand to let her watch me hear.

Border Post Nine was a log house with a tin stove and a radio nobody had turned on in years.

The Beta sat at the table under a single lit lamp, waiting in the dim room.

"I thought it'd be you," he said.

"You thought it'd be me, and you're still here."

"Where would I go?"

He pushed a ledger across the table.

It was the post's crossing book, with every entry written by hand in the same square letters.

He turned it to a page three Octobers old and tapped the line for the full moon.

"That night, Dane came here before midnight," he said. "He had a story ready."

"A rabid white wolf from the south hills, killing sheep, heading for Crown land by the Black Fir bridge."

"There was no wolf."

"There were no sheep either. I'd walked those pastures that morning."

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