From Ashes to Their Luna novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Border Gate

In front of both packs Nessa opens her coat and shows what her family did; Margot cries, Anson crosses the line and is taken down, and her father leaves her with one warning: ask him what happens to Hollow Creek when she stays.

The border gate was a wooden bridge over the creek, with a torch on each post.

Hollow Creek stood on one side of it in a crowd, sixty wolves or more, still in their treaty clothes.

Stonepine stood on the other, just as many and much quieter.

My father stood at the front, with Anson on his right and Garson and Dalton behind him.

Margot was beside him with a handkerchief at her mouth.

My father was a big man with silver hair and a voice that carried without ever being raised.

"Alpha Stroud," he said. "My youngest daughter is unwell. She wandered off tonight in a confused state. I'm told she is on your side of the water."

"She is," Kieran said.

"Then I'll have her back."

I came out of the dark behind Kieran and stopped at the edge of the torchlight.

I was wearing his coat. My feet were bare. I could not feel my hands.

Nobody in my family had looked at me in public for years. Now sixty people looked at me at once.

"Nessa!" Margot sobbed. "Oh, Nessa, thank God. Come home, sweetheart. You know how you get."

She held out her arms.

It was a very good performance. I had watched her practice it on other people.

"She has episodes," Margot told the crowd. "She says things. She hurts herself, and then she says we did it."

A murmur went through the Hollow Creek side. Some of them nodded.

I felt my cheeks go cold.

That was how it worked. For fourteen years every bruise on me had a story, and Margot had told all of them first.

"Nessa," my father said gently. "Come here."

I walked to the middle of the bridge.

Kieran did not stop me. He stayed three steps behind, where I could feel him and not see him.

"I'm not unwell," I said.

My voice shook. I made it keep going.

"I'm not confused, either. I would like to show you something."

I took off the coat and let it fall on the planks.

Then I unbuttoned my blouse in front of both packs, down to the linen strip, and held the sides open.

Torchlight fell across my ribs, my stomach and my arms.

The old yellow and the new black lay on me from hip to collarbone.

Nobody said a word.

A young Hollow Creek woman near the front put her hand over her mouth. It was the laundress from the hallway.

This time she did not look at the floor.

"My family did this," I said. "My sister, and my three brothers. Today it was for clearing my throat."

"That's a lie," Anson said.

He said it fast, and too loud.

Garson pushed past him. "She fell down the cellar stairs! Everybody knows she's clumsy!"

"Then why," Kieran said from behind me, very quietly, "is there not one mark above her collar or below her wrist?"

Margot stopped crying.

I watched her face go still and flat, and for the first time in my life I saw her do the sum.

Anson roared and ran at the bridge.

He came across the line with his fist drawn back, and he was fast, and he was aimed at me.

He did not reach me.

A tall man stepped out of the Stonepine ranks and caught his wrist in the air.

It was Kieran's Beta, back from the treaty table. He twisted once, and my eldest brother went down on his knees on the planks, with his arm held up behind him.

"You crossed the line uninvited," the Beta said. "On a night we were signing peace. Do you want to explain that to your Council?"

A low, shocked noise came from the Hollow Creek crowd.

Anson's face went dark red.

"Let him up," my father said.

The Beta let go. Anson crawled back across the line, holding his shoulder.

My father looked at me for a long time. There was no anger in it. I would have preferred anger.

He looked at me and added something up.

"The treaty is not signed," he said at last, to Kieran. "I withdraw it. Keep her tonight, if you like."

"I will," Kieran said.

"Then keep her," my father said. "But ask him what happens to Hollow Creek when she stays, Nessa."

He turned and walked back into his own crowd.

Margot looked at me over his shoulder, once, with no tears in her eyes at all.

Then the whole pack followed him into the dark.

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