From Ashes to Their Luna novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: No Tea

They gave me a room at the end of the lodge with a bed, a window and a door that locked from the inside.

I locked it. Then I unlocked it, and then I locked it again.

I could not remember the last time a door had been mine.

Kieran had walked me down the hall and stopped three paces short of the threshold.

"Ask me," I said, before he could say good night. "What my father meant."

He was quiet for a moment.

"I don't know all of it," he said. "I know your mother's family held Hollow Creek's land for a long time."

"And?"

"The hunting there has been poor for years. The other packs say so."

"That's not an answer."

"It's all I have that is true. I won't give you a guess and call it a fact."

I looked at his face. He did not look away.

"Good night, Kieran."

"Good night, Nessa."

The bed was soft and the sheets smelled of cedar, and I lay on my back and listened to the lodge settle.

Nobody shouted. Nobody walked past my door slowly.

It was the quietest night of my life, and I could not sleep in it.

At midnight my gums began to ache.

It started at the back of my jaw, a dull pressure on both sides that kept growing.

By one o'clock my spine was burning, from the base of my skull to my hips.

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