The Alpha Rejected His Scentless Mate at the Altar, So She Came Back as the Luna He Kneels For novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Moon-born

In Iron Ridge a fever burns ten years of wolfsbane out of Selene's blood and her silver wolf wakes; five years later she walks into Ashenveil's hall wearing Ironclaw's crown, and Tiernan orders her seized.

"Told by who?" I said.

My teeth were chattering so hard I barely got it out.

Theron Stannard put the white coat around my shoulders himself.

It was lined with fur and still warm from his truck.

"Wolves talk," he said. "Even Ashenveil wolves."

"I never wrote to you."

"I know you didn't." He smiled. "I've never had a letter from you in my life."

"Then why are you here?"

"Because nobody else was going to be."

Behind me, across three miles of dark forest, was the only home I had ever known.

In front of me were the Ironclaw wolves, the pack every Ashenveil child was raised to hate.

My feet had stopped hurting, which I knew was bad.

I followed him to the truck.

Iron Ridge was an old mining town high in the mountains, all steep streets and tin roofs.

Theron's house sat at the very top, the old mine manager's house with a porch that looked down over everything.

I didn't see much of it that first week.

By morning I had a fever.

By the second night I was screaming.

My bones felt like someone was pulling them out one at a time.

I sweated through the sheets, then froze, then sweated again.

Theron's healer was a stern woman in her sixties with cold hands.

She sat on the edge of the bed and smelled my breath.

Then she took blood from my arm and held the vial up to the lamp.

The blood was dark, almost black at the bottom.

"Wolfsbane," she said.

Theron was leaning in the doorway.

"How much?"

"Not a dose. Years of it. A little every day, enough to keep her wolf asleep."

She looked down at me.

"Child, who fed you?"

I stared at the ceiling.

I thought of the kitchen in the Beta house.

I thought of the blue cup with the chipped handle.

Every single morning since my twelfth birthday, Imogen had knocked on my attic door with it.

Ginger and honey, she always said. For your nerves.

It had a bitter edge under the honey.

I used to think that was the ginger.

I used to thank her.

"My sister," I whispered.

She wasn't my sister.

She had just been the only one who ever brought me anything.

On the third night, the moon came up full over Iron Ridge.

I woke up on my hands and knees on the floor.

Something inside me was waking up too.

It had been asleep for ten years, and it was angry.

My spine bent.

My hands split into paws on the wooden boards.

I went through the bedroom window in a shower of glass and landed in the snow on four feet.

I was huge.

My fur was silver-white, bright as the moon itself.

The cold didn't touch me at all.

For the first time in my life I could smell everything.

Pine sap. Coal smoke. Forty wolves on the street below, and every one of them afraid.

I lifted my head and howled.

Up and down the steep streets, every Ironclaw wolf went down on its belly in the snow.

The healer fell to her knees on the porch.

Theron Stannard came down the steps slowly.

He knelt in the snow in front of me, and his pale eyes were shining.

"Moon-born," he said. "Your mother was one. Did you know that?"

I didn't.

Nobody had ever told me anything about my mother except that she drowned.

The next morning he put a box on the end of my bed.

Inside it was a plain circle of black iron.

"Ironclaw's Luna wears this," he said. "Mine has been empty for years."

"I'm not your mate."

"No. And I won't ask you to be. Not my mate, not my bed."

He sat down in the chair by the window.

"Wear the crown. Train my wolves. Serve Ironclaw while it's on your head."

"And what do I get?"

"The day you walk back in."

I looked at the iron.

I looked down at my left hand, at the pale band of skin where the pack ring used to be.

"Yes," I said.

He cut his palm and then mine, and we pressed them together over the crown.

My blood ran into the iron.

The iron drank it.

When he set the crown on my head, it was warm.

Five years went by.

I ran Ironclaw's border patrols.

I trained their young wolves, and they would have walked into a fire for me.

My hair grew out silver.

Nobody in Iron Ridge ever called me scentless.

Then, last month, the invitation came.

The Midwinter Council of the northern packs meets every five years.

This year it would meet at Ashenveil.

It would open on December twenty-first.

Five years to the day.

We drove down in a line of black trucks.

The gates of Ashenveil Hall were hung with pine.

I could hear the music before I reached the doors.

I could smell three hundred wolves inside.

The Ironclaw Beta walked on my left, Theron on my right.

I pushed the doors open myself.

The hall went quiet from the back to the front.

Nobody recognized me at first.

Then someone near the doors said my name like a question.

The high table was full.

Garrick sat in the Beta's chair with grey in his beard now.

Imogen sat beside the Alpha in cream cashmere and pearls, a big diamond on her hand.

She was leaning her head toward his shoulder.

And Tiernan Ravensdale was looking straight at me.

He looked older.

He looked like he hadn't slept in a long time.

His eyes went from my silver hair to the iron crown on my head.

He stood up so fast his chair went over behind him.

"Seize her," he said.

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