The Alpha Carried Her, So the Luna Cut the Bond novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Her Son's Room
Wynne finds Calla in Eli's bed and his things in boxes, takes back his blanket and wooden wolf in front of the staff, and that night Hester pulls a silver fragment from her leg stamped with the pack's own armory mark.
Wynne discharged herself from the hospital before the ink on the severance had dried.
The doctor begged her to stay for the leg.
She took the crutches and walked out past forty staff who stared at the floor.
By dusk she was at the gate of the Ashfall pack house with her cast gone pink and wet.
The guards on the gate let her through without a word.
She climbed the stairs one crutch at a time and turned toward the nursery at the end of the east hall.
The door stood open.
Four cardboard boxes sat in the corridor.
A maid knelt over the nearest one, folding a small blue jumper with great care.
"What is this?" Wynne asked.
The maid went white and stood up.
"The Alpha's order, Luna. Miss Calla needs the quiet room for her recovery. We were told to pack it gently."
Wynne looked past her.
Eli's bed had a stranger's grey blanket on it.
Calla sat against the pillows with her bandaged knee propped up and a tray of soup on her lap.
She lit up when she saw Wynne, then looked ashamed of lighting up.
"Wynne, I didn't know you were home already. Garrick said you'd be kept in all week."
"Get out of my son's bed."
"I'm so sorry." Calla's eyes filled. "He said the nursery was the only room without stairs. I only wanted it not to be empty. I swear I told them to keep everything safe."
She held out the spoon as if the soup were something Wynne might want.
Wynne bent to the nearest box.
Under the jumper was the wooden wolf Eli had carried everywhere, with its ears chewed down to stubs.
She took it out and held it against her chest.
Under the wolf was his blanket, the green one with the cut corner.
She pulled it free and folded it over her arm.
The steward had come up behind her, with two guards and three more maids at his back.
"Luna," he said, "the Alpha has asked that nothing be taken out of the nursery without his word."
"Then ask him to stop me."
She started down the corridor with a crutch under one arm and her dead son's blanket under the other.
Nobody touched her.
Garrick met her on the main staircase, coming up two steps at a time.
Someone had run to fetch him.
He saw the wolf in her fist and stopped.
"Put it back," he said.
"No."
"Wynne. Calla is hurt. She needs that room, and you can use the guest wing for a week. It's one week."
"Eli had that room for four years. Seven days ago he was in it."
"I know when he was in it."
Garrick said it low, and for a moment his jaw worked, and she thought he might say something true.
Then Calla's voice drifted down from the landing.
"Garrick, please, don't fight over me. I'll go. I'll sleep in the hall."
He turned his head toward it at once.
"You'll do no such thing," he called up. "Stay where you are."
He looked back at Wynne with the old tiredness in his face and none of the guilt.
"Don't make me choose tonight. Take the guest wing."
"I'm not choosing the guest wing."
She went around him and kept climbing.
He did not follow.
The Luna's rooms were at the top of the west stairs, dark and cold, with the fire unlit.
She lit it herself.
She lay on the bed with the wolf against her ear and the blanket over her face.
The leg throbbed hard enough to make her teeth ache.
Just after midnight a knock came, soft and slow, three times.
Hester Dunmore stood in the doorway, white plait over her shoulder and a green wool shawl around her, with a leather roll under her arm.
She was sixty-six and had delivered every child in the pack for forty years.
She had delivered Eli.
"I heard you walked out of that hospital," Hester said. "Foolish girl. Lie back."
"Hester, I'm fine."
"You've been bleeding into that plaster for nine hours."
Hester cut the cast open with a pair of shears from the roll and peeled it back.
The calf was black and swollen around a bright splinter of metal.
Wynne gripped the blanket.
"Hold the wolf," Hester said, and put a folded cloth between Wynne's teeth.
She worked with long tweezers and a steady hand.
It took a long minute, and Wynne bit through the cloth.
The sliver came out whole.
Hester held it up to the lamp.
It was not a shard of car door.
It was a small, flat piece of silver, cut square on one side, and stamped with a tiny ash tree.
Hester had seen that stamp on every blade in the pack for forty years.
"This is Ashfall armory silver," she said quietly. "Someone put this in your car."
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