Six Years As His Luna. He Only Wanted My Sister novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Luna's Orders

Mara takes back the keys, clears Odette from the Luna's wing and the warriors obey her; she wraps Elias's split knuckle, and Bastian's mother tells the elders Mara is barren.

At dawn I woke to the sound of trunks being dragged up the Luna's staircase.

I opened my door.

Two maids were carrying my sister's luggage into the Luna's wing, my wing, while Bastian's mother directed them from the landing.

"The east rooms are ready for her," she said. "Mara can take the small guest room by the kitchen."

I stepped into the hall in my nightdress.

"Put it down," I said.

The maids froze.

"The Luna of Holt gave you an order," said a low voice behind me. Elias stood at the end of the corridor with his arms folded. He had slept in a chair outside my door. I had heard it creak every hour.

The maids set the trunks on the floor.

Bastian's mother turned on me.

"You have no right."

"I have every right until the full moon. Ask the elders. Ask your son." I held out my hand. "The household keys, please."

She clutched the iron ring at her belt.

"They are mine to carry while the Luna is indisposed."

"I am standing here, awake and able to read the law," I said. "Give them to me."

Nobody moved.

Then the old housekeeper came up the stairs with her sleeves rolled to the elbow. She had run the kitchens for thirty years.

She looked at the ring, then at me.

"Luna's keys, Luna's word," she said. "It is how it has always been."

She plucked the ring off Bastian's mother's belt herself and put it in my hand.

I nodded to the two warriors who had come up behind her.

"Take my sister's trunks to the guest wing. The one with the good windows. She is our guest, and she will be treated like one."

They hesitated, then they picked up the luggage.

They did it fast.

Every man in the Holt pack had eaten bread I had arranged for the winter stores. Every one of them had a mother or a sister I had sat with in the sick house. They did not need the Alpha's permission to obey me, and they knew it.

Bastian's mother went white around the mouth.

"You will regret this," she said.

"Probably," I said. "Good morning."

I walked down the stairs with the keys in my fist and Elias three steps behind me.

At the bottom I stopped.

Blood had soaked through the cloth he had tied round his right hand in the night. His knuckle had split again, clean across the bone.

"Give me your hand," I said.

"It is nothing, Luna."

"That was not a request."

He crossed the hall and held it out.

I took a bandage from the shelf beside the pantry door. His palm was hot and rough, and so large that my own hand disappeared in it. I unwound the filthy cloth, and I cleaned the cut with water from the jug.

He did not make a sound.

He did not pull away, either.

I wrapped the knuckle slowly, and when I tied the knot I felt a low rumble move through the bones of his hand into mine.

It was his wolf.

I looked up.

His eyes had turned a darker grey, and he was staring at the wall behind my head, breathing through his teeth.

"Does it hurt that much?" I asked.

"No."

"You are growling."

"The cold," he said. "It gets into the joints."

It was the middle of autumn, and the kitchen fire had burned all night.

I told myself it was the cold.

I let go of his hand a moment later than I needed to.

He closed it into a fist and put it behind his back.

"Thank you, Luna," he said.

"You can call me Mara. I think, until the moon, I am allowed to say that."

He did not answer.

He only nodded once, and the nod was very careful.

We went into the dining hall together. For the first time in six years, I sat at the head of the long table and ate breakfast with the pack.

Nobody said anything about the empty chair on my right.

I was buttering bread when the doors banged open.

The oldest elder came in with two others behind him. He did not sit.

"Luna," he said. "We have received a petition from the Alpha's mother."

I set my knife down.

"What does she petition?"

He kept his eyes on the table.

"She says that in six years you have borne no child. She says you are barren." He cleared his throat. "She says the bond has failed because of you, not because of the Alpha, and she asks the pack to hear it today, in the hall, before the Moon Court."

At the far end of the table, Bastian's mother walked in and took her seat.

Odette sat beside her with her hands folded.

Her eyes were wet again.

"I'm so sorry, Mara," she whispered. "I told her not to."

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