The Alpha Who Let His Luna Die novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Walk Out

The broken bond brings her to her knees, but she walks through the pack and over the border, where Ashfall's Alpha waits.

The rejection hurt worse than the silver.

It started in my neck, where the mark had been, and spread down my spine.

My wolf curled up inside me and howled without sound.

I made myself stay on my feet.

"Luna," a young warrior said, and reached out to hold my elbow.

"Don't call me that," I said. "I'm just Elora now."

He took his hand back.

I started to walk.

The ring of wolves opened in front of me, one body at a time, until there was a path across the grass.

No one said a word.

No one told me to stay, and no one offered a car.

I heard Dorian behind me say, very low, "Elora, stop."

I did not stop.

"Alpha," someone whispered, "do we hold her?"

I waited for his answer with my whole back.

It was a long breath before he spoke.

"Let her cool off," Dorian said. "She'll come back when it hurts too much."

That was the sentence that finished it.

He thought the pain would bring me back like a dog to a whistle.

He was not wrong about the pain.

I got as far as the gravel lot before my legs shook so hard I had to hold the side of a truck.

My daughter pushed against my ribs, once, twice, weakly.

"I know," I told her. "I know, little one. Keep going."

The keys were not in my pocket, because I'd never had keys on me in my own pack.

Everyone drove me.

So I walked.

The road out of Stonehollow runs down through pines for six miles before it meets the creek that marks the border.

I made it two miles before the first time I had to stop.

I stopped to throw up blood beside the road and wiped my mouth on my sleeve.

Behind me I could feel the pack bond thinning, thread by thread, each one snapping.

Every thread was a face.

The woman who taught me to bake, the boy whose broken arm I set, the old man who used to wave from his porch.

They had all been mine yesterday.

I did not cry, because crying took breath and I had none to spare.

At mile four my vision started going gray at the edges.

I kept my hand on my belly and counted my steps out loud.

"Eleven, twelve, thirteen."

At some point I stopped counting steps and started counting kicks, and I got to two.

Then the creek was in front of me, black and fast between its stones.

On the far bank, the trees were different.

Taller, older, with silver-white bark.

That was Ashfall land.

Dorian's father had spent his whole life at war with the Ashfall Alphas, and I had been raised to cross the road to avoid their scent.

I stepped into the creek anyway.

The water came up to my knees, so cold it felt like glass.

I made it to the middle and slipped on a stone and went down on one hip, and my hands landed in the current.

I thought, so this is where it ends, in a stream, on the wrong side of everyone.

I crawled.

Gravel dug into my palms, and the sky tipped sideways.

Then somebody's boots were in front of my face.

Big boots, mud-caked, planted square on the bank.

I lifted my head enough to see the legs above them, and a hand holding a flashlight, and the beam pouring into my eyes.

"Don't you shift," said a low voice. "Not in that state. You'll lose the pup."

I knew that voice.

I had heard it across a dozen Council tables, always arguing with my husband, always calm.

The flashlight lowered.

The man behind it was tall and broad through the shoulders, with a scar running along his jaw.

His eyes were the color of storm clouds.

Kellan Harrington, Alpha of Ashfall.

"You're on my land, Luna Stroud," he said.

"I'm not," I got out. "I'm not a Luna. Not anymore."

He crouched in front of me, and his gaze went over my face, my torn collar and my bleeding neck.

I watched him understand.

His jaw went tight.

"Who did this to you?"

"He gave the fruit to someone else," I said. "He didn't even look at me."

My voice cracked and broke apart.

The Alpha of Ashfall did not say he was sorry.

He did not say anything gentle.

He stood up, slid his arms under my knees and my shoulders, and lifted me out of the water.

"I have the other one," he said.

I was too far gone to understand him.

"The other what?"

"The other fruit," Kellan said. "My mother's tree. It's been ripe for a month."

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