I Refused to Be His Luna Again novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Again

Anders finds her at her grandmother's door and catches her slip, 'again', and that night her wolf rises white and huge for the first time in her memory.

Anders came to my grandmother's door at nine that night with snow on his shoulders and his coat unbuttoned.

He didn't knock.

He just stood on the porch, breathing hard.

My grandmother Sigrun opened the door, looked him up and down, and pointed at the mat.

"Wipe your feet," she said. "You're letting the cold in, and I only get the one stove."

"Sigrun," Anders said. "I need to talk to Marit."

"I figured. Everyone does today."

She shuffled back to her kettle, and he came in and filled up half her kitchen.

I was sitting at the table with my boots off and a bowl of her barley soup.

I had not eaten properly in what felt like twenty years, and I wasn't about to stop for him.

"You can sit," I said.

He stayed standing.

"Linnea woke up an hour ago," he said. "The healer says it was the shock. She cried until she was sick."

"I'm glad she's awake."

"She asked me not to be angry with you."

I put down my spoon.

"That was kind of her."

"Marit." He took a breath, and it came out rough. "Three months ago the Council named you. I asked you to stand with me. You said yes, and you looked me in the eye when you said it."

"I did."

"Then today you wrote her name. In front of everyone. Why?"

My grandmother had gone very still at the stove, and she was listening to every word.

I looked at his hands, big and scarred and clenched at his sides.

I had held those hands for twenty years.

"Because you'd choose her," I said. "You always would. So I'm saving us both the trouble."

"I have never chosen her over the pack."

"You've never had to."

His jaw worked.

"You think I would let her take a Luna's seat? She can't even shift. The Council would have thrown it out in a heartbeat, and you knew that when you wrote it."

"Yes, I knew."

"Then you did it to shame me."

"No," I said. "I did it because I won't be your Luna again."

The word hung in the kitchen.

Anders frowned.

"Again," he said slowly.

I felt the blood leave my face.

"What does that mean? You've never been my Luna."

"It's a figure of speech."

"You don't use figures of speech, Marit. You've told me what you think plainly since the day you joined the scouts."

"Then I misspoke."

"You never misspeak."

My grandmother put a mug down in front of him with a hard clack.

"Drink your tea," she said, "and stop interrogating my granddaughter in my kitchen. She's had a day."

He did not touch the mug.

He looked at me for a long time.

"Ninety days," he said finally. "That's what I have. You'll tell me why before then."

"I won't."

"We'll see."

He left without finishing the soup he hadn't been offered, and the door shut behind him with the snow still blowing in.

My grandmother turned the lock.

"Well," she said. "He's got your mother's stubbornness, that boy. And you've got mine."

"Gran, I'm sorry."

"I'm not." She tapped the table. "You've not looked like yourself for months. Today you looked like you were awake."

I could not tell her why.

I went to bed in the little room under the eaves and lay there listening to the wind.

I did not sleep.

Around midnight I got up, pulled my boots on, and went out the back way into the woods.

The cold was clean and bright, and the moon lay on the snow like spilled milk.

I walked until the cottage lights were gone.

In my first life, my wolf had gone quiet after my thirtieth birthday, a dull weight in my chest that never quite woke.

I had thought it was just age.

Now I stood in the dark with my arms wrapped around myself, and I let go.

It took no effort at all.

The pull started in my spine and ran through my whole body, hot and bright, and my bones bent without pain.

I dropped to four feet in the snow, and the world exploded into scent and sound.

Pine sap, rabbit, the river under its ice, woodsmoke from three miles off.

My wolf came up through me, huge and white and furious with joy.

I ran.

I ran the length of the ridge without once tiring, and when I reached the top I threw back my head and howled.

The sound rolled over the valley.

Below me, on the patrol road, Torben's night shift had stopped dead in the snow.

Every one of them was staring up at a white wolf the pack had never seen.

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