His Luna? Never, He Rejected Me First novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Harrowgate

Three years later Eira registers Ashfall for the Blood Moon Games and learns the rejection rule. At the opening parade her eyes meet Ronan's across the Bowl and he goes white.

The Warden at the Harrowgate gate looked at our entry paper and then at us.

"Ashfall," she said. "There is no pack called Ashfall."

"There will be after Saturday," Bram said, and gave her his widest gap-toothed grin.

The Warden did not smile back.

She was a tall woman with gray hair cut like a helmet, and she had a stamp in one hand and a long iron key in the other.

The Blood Moon Games came around once every three years, and she had judged the last six of them.

Behind her, the walls of Harrowgate went up gray and wet into the fog.

Odessa leaned on her stick beside me, looking bored.

"Rogue wolves may register as an unaligned pack if five fighters sign," she said. "Section nine, Compact law. You wrote it yourself."

The Warden counted us.

Odessa, who was sixty-one and carried a stick she did not need.

Bram, who was twenty-nine and could not stop talking.

Two quiet brothers from the high camp.

And me.

"The fifth signature is an Eira," the Warden said. "No surname."

"No surname," I agreed.

She looked up from the paper at my face.

I had worn my hair in a tight braid, and my leathers were old and black, and the scar along my forearm showed where the sleeve was pushed back.

It had taken me three years to get that scar.

I had earned every inch of it.

"Weapons stay at the gate," the Warden said. "Truce holds on the estate grounds from now until the Final. Any wolf who draws blood outside the Bowl is thrown out and their pack loses its seat."

She stamped the paper, and the iron gate groaned open.

Bram bumped my shoulder as we went through.

"Look at you, not even sweating," he said. "I'm sweating. I'm sweating through my good shirt."

"That's your only shirt."

"And it's a good one."

I almost laughed, and then I saw the field.

Harrowgate's Bowl was a huge oval of dark turf ringed by stone seats.

Nine banners hung from nine poles along the north wall, one for every pack in the Cascade Compact.

I looked along them without meaning to.

I found the eighth one by the fourth pole.

It was black, with a silver pine tree.

My stomach turned over once, slowly.

"That's them," Bram said quietly, following my eyes.

He had never been gentle about it, but he was gentle now.

"You don't have to go in the parade," he said. "Odessa can say you're sick."

"I'm not sick."

"No," Odessa said. "You're not."

She tapped my boot with her stick.

"Three years ago I told you not to answer him, and I never told you why. I told you you'd know when it mattered. Do you still trust me?"

I thought about the cave, and the winters, and the nights I woke up with my own howl in my throat.

I thought about the first time my wolf had finally come when I called her.

"Yes," I said.

"Then walk out there with your chin up."

The opening parade began at noon.

Every pack marched around the Bowl in a line behind its Alpha, and the crowd roared as each one passed.

Ashfall went last, because we were new.

There were no banners for us.

There was only Odessa's stick and Bram's off-key whistling and the sound of our boots on the turf.

I kept my eyes straight ahead.

The stands were full of wolves in their pack colors, and every one of them was staring at the five rogues nobody had heard of.

A little girl in the second row was waving at us with both hands.

I waved back.

The Blackpine column came around the far curve at that moment, heading for the reviewing stand.

I knew it by the sound before I saw it.

Four hundred boots in perfect step.

At the head of them walked a tall man in a long black coat, and the wind pulled his dark hair back from his face.

I had known that walk since I was a child.

I had known it down to the half step he took when he was angry and trying not to show it.

My wolf lifted her head inside my chest.

She had not lifted it for him in three years.

Ronan Strathmore turned his head.

He found me across the whole width of the Bowl.

His eyes met mine, and he stopped.

He stopped walking at the head of four hundred wolves, and the column behind him stumbled and bunched up against his back.

The color went out of his face all at once.

His lips parted, and I saw his mouth shape a single word.

It was not Eira.

It was something shorter and rougher, and it looked like "alive."

At his elbow, Calista Ravenscroft turned to see what he was staring at.

She wore a pale blue dress and her silver locket, and she was smiling.

Then she saw me, and the smile stayed exactly where it was.

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