Half Claimed novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Half a Bite
On her claiming night Alpha Idris's teeth are in Yvaine's neck when the Ridge Bell rings and he tears away mid-bite, leaving her bleeding and half marked before every Alpha at the Gathering.
Idris Holloway's teeth were in my neck when the Ridge Bell started to ring.
I felt the first stroke through his jaw before I heard it.
We stood on the Moon Stone, the flat granite shelf above Silverpine Hall where every Alpha has claimed his mate for two hundred years.
Below us the whole pack stood on the slope with torches, four hundred wolves holding their breath.
My left shoulder was bare, my dress pushed down, and his hand was spread across my back.
His bite was deep and hot and exactly what the old women had promised.
A claim takes two sets of teeth.
He bites first, and then I bite him back at the collar, and only then am I his Luna.
I had my mouth open against his skin, ready to answer.
The bell rang again, fast and flat, the pattern we use for a border attack.
Idris tore his teeth out of me.
It hurt more than the bite had.
He stared at me with my blood on his chin and a look I had never seen on him.
"Yvaine," he said, and nothing after it.
Then Odell was shouting from the slope, "Border! Stag Ford! Idris, they're through the ford!"
Idris was gone before the name stopped echoing.
He took the steps three at a time.
The whole pack turned and ran after him, and the torches streamed down the ridge road.
I stood alone on the Stone with my dress hanging off one shoulder.
Blood ran down my collarbone and into the green wool.
I put my palm over the wound and it pulsed under my hand.
It pulsed in time with another heart, a big slow one that was racing, and it was not mine.
I could feel him running.
I could feel his boots hit the ridge road, and the cold in his lungs, and a bright hard fear that tasted like iron.
That was the part nobody had told me about.
A half mark has a bond in it, and the bond was already open.
"Miss Colter."
It was the Luna's steward, a stooped man with a lantern, standing at the top of the steps.
"Lady Verity asks that you come to the infirmary, quietly, by the back path," he said.
"She thinks it kinder if nobody sees you like this."
I looked down at myself.
I was the pack archivist, twenty-two years old, with ink on my fingers and a bite in my neck.
The kind thing, apparently, was to hide the bite.
"No," I said.
He blinked at me.
"No, thank you," I said. "I'm walking down the front way."
"Miss, the guests."
"I know who is down there."
Six visiting Alphas had come for the Autumn Gathering, each with his seconds and his scent trained on the hall.
They had come for nine nights of feasting.
They had also come for the Moon Stone, because a Silverpine Alpha's claiming is the best show on the ridge.
I pulled the pencil out of my hair and let the twist fall loose on my shoulders.
Then I pinned it all up again on the right side, high, so my left neck was bare to the torchlight.
If I was going to be looked at, I would be looked at standing straight.
I walked down the steps and across the grass with my shoulder bleeding and my chin up.
The hall yard was nearly empty.
The pack had run to the border, and the ones who stayed behind went silent when they saw me.
At the foot of the steps, six men in six different coats had stopped talking.
They were looking at my neck.
One by one they lifted their heads, the way wolves do, and breathed in.
I knew exactly what they smelled.
I smelled of Idris, and of fresh blood, and of nothing else.
A mark that is only half done does not carry a Luna's scent.
No rank, and no shelter.
The biggest of them, a thick man in a black leather jacket, smiled at me without moving his eyes anywhere else.
I walked past him to the hall steps and sat down on the third one, in the lamplight.
I did not leave.
I sat there all night.
I felt Idris cross the ridge, and reach Stag Ford, and stand in the cold in the dark.
I felt his heartbeat slow as he found nothing.
I felt his anger come up, and the thing under the anger that he would not let himself name.
Odell found me at the first grey light and put his coat around me without a word.
His crooked tooth showed when he tried to smile.
"There's no one at Stag Ford," he said quietly. "Not a raider, not a track. Idris is still out there looking."
I touched my neck.
The wound had scabbed overnight into a half crescent, a thin red moon with the bottom missing.
"Then somebody rang that bell on purpose," I said.
The hall doors opened behind us.
Luna Verity came out onto the top step in a grey gown with her silver torc at her throat.
She looked as fresh as if she had slept eight hours.
She did not look at me first.
She looked at the six Alphas, still waiting in the yard, and she raised her voice so it carried across the whole gathering.
"Honored guests," she said. "A half mark is not a claim."
Every head in the yard turned.
And six unmated Alphas stepped toward the stairs.
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