His Luna's Forgotten Scars novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Mark on My Neck

Ewan storms the Ironwood gate with twenty wolves, Garrick claims Rowena as his Luna, and Ewan admits he knew who she was. Then the boy collapses coughing grey.

Ewan came up the drive at a run, with twenty Brindle Creek wolves fanned out behind him.

They were in their human skin, but their eyes were bright, and the gravel spat under their boots.

Ironwood's gate guards came out of the pines to meet them.

Within a minute there were forty people on the drive, and no one was speaking.

Ewan didn't look at Garrick.

He looked at me, sitting on the gravel with my sleeve pushed up and a red handprint on my wrist.

His whole face changed.

"Ro." He crouched in front of me and took my hand very gently. "Did he do that?"

"He pulled me," I said. "I'm fine."

I was not fine.

Ewan stood up slowly.

He was a head shorter than Garrick, but when he turned, Garrick's guards took a step back.

"Touch her again," Ewan said, "and I'll take the arm."

Garrick came down two steps.

"In my own drive? In front of my own pack?" He smiled, and it was an ugly, easy thing. "You are on my land, Rook. You have been on my land every day for a year, with my wife."

The Ironwood wolves went very still.

I stared at him.

"Your wife," I said.

"My Luna." Garrick tapped his own neck, just under the jaw. "My mark. Look at your neck in a mirror, Rowena. You've never once let yourself, have you?"

I had not.

I had worn my hair down every day since I could remember.

My hand went up on its own and found a ridge under my left ear, raised and old, the shape of a bite.

Ewan had told me it was from the accident.

"No rejection was ever spoken," Garrick said. He raised his voice so the whole drive could hear. "No Council hearing cut the bond. By wolf law, she is the Luna of Ironwood, and he has been keeping her."

Someone behind me swore.

A Brindle Creek wolf whispered, "Alpha, is that true?"

Ewan did not answer him.

I got up off the gravel.

My legs shook, but I made them hold.

"Ewan." I said it quietly, so only he would hear. "Look at me."

He turned.

His eyes were green and steady, and I had never seen them frightened before.

"Did you know who I was?"

The wind moved through the pines, and the whole drive waited.

"Yes," Ewan said.

The word went through me like a cold blade.

"The whole year?"

"From the first night." He didn't look away. "I found you at the border. I knew your face. I knew whose you were."

"And you let me sleep in your bed."

"Ro, you were hurt."

"You let me think you were all I had."

"I will tell you all of it," he said. "Not here. Please."

Garrick laughed behind him.

"He'll tell you what he wants you to hear. He always has. Come inside, Rowena. Eat something. Sit in your own house and let me tell you what you did."

"What I did?" I said.

"You walked out on a six-year-old boy," Garrick said, "and the night Ironwood's herb store burned down, a warrior died in it."

He let that hang over the drive.

"The Council has had a warrant out for you for a year."

The Ironwood wolves had their eyes on me now, and I felt every one.

I looked at their faces, and none of them looked surprised.

They believed him.

Of course they believed him.

I was a woman they didn't know, standing in front of them with a stranger's hand on my back.

"I didn't do that," I said.

"You don't remember," Garrick said, almost gently. "That's convenient."

"Say that again."

"I said it's convenient."

My wolf rose in my chest, hot and hard.

"I'm not going into your house," I said. "I'm going home, and when I've got my own answers, I'll come back and ask you for yours."

"Home," Garrick said.

He looked at Ewan, and for the first time his voice dropped to something raw.

"You mean his bed."

Then, from the steps, came a high, thin sound.

It was a bark, the half-shifted bark of a child who had lost control of his own throat.

Jory was standing in the doorway.

He had taken his coat off, and his thin shirt hung from his shoulders.

"Mama, don't go," he said.

His voice cracked on it.

Garrick turned.

"Jory, inside."

"She's going. I heard her." The boy took three stumbling steps onto the porch. "I'll be good. I'll be good, I won't say it again, I won't say it was your fault."

My heart stopped.

He coughed, and it was the deep dragging one from the creek bank, only worse.

He grabbed at his chest.

I saw his knees go.

I was running before I knew I'd moved, past Garrick's outstretched arm, across the gravel and up the steps.

I caught Jory before his head hit the stone.

He coughed again into my hands.

When I opened my fingers, they were wet and grey.

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