He Traded His Pregnant Luna to the Lycan King novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Not Weak

Wynne answers Torin from the wall of Highmoor, climbs two hundred stairs without losing her breath for the first time in three years, and Edda says there was never anything wrong with her.

"Send him a note," Ronan said. "I'll have the marshal write it."

"No."

I was already out of bed, holding the bedpost with one hand and my skirt with the other.

"He gave me away in front of his whole pack," I said. "He can hear the answer from my mouth."

"The gate tower is two hundred and twelve steps," said Edda from the doorway, with a tray in her hands. "I counted once, out of spite."

"Then I'll count them too."

Ronan looked at me for a long moment.

Then he stepped aside and clasped his hands behind his back, in plain sight.

"I'll walk behind you," he said.

We climbed.

For three years I had been out of breath by the second landing of any staircase.

I always blamed the weak Luna's constitution, and the pack doctor, and my own body.

At step one hundred I waited for the burn in my chest and the pounding in my ears.

It didn't come.

At step two hundred, the guard behind me was breathing harder than I was.

I stepped out onto the top of the wall and stood in the wind with my braid whipping across my face.

My knees hurt.

My lungs felt as if I had just woken up from a long sleep.

Far below the gate, a gray horse stood on the road with three riders around it.

One of them was Torin.

He had come himself.

He tilted his head back, and when he saw me at the parapet his whole face changed.

I knew that look.

It was the one he wore at pack meetings, warm and open, the one that made forty wolves trust him with their children.

"Wynne," he called. "Thank the Moon. Come down, love."

"I'm fine where I am."

"You're not fine." His voice carried up the stone, kind and worried and loud enough for the guards on the wall to hear every word. "You're pale as paper. You've been sick for three years, and you've just been through a terrible shock. These people don't know how to look after you."

The nearest guard shifted his weight and stared at the wall.

"I know it was hard, what I did," Torin said. "I made a call for the pack. You would have done the same."

"I would have asked you first."

A silence came up from the road.

I leaned both hands on the stone.

"You told the elders I volunteered," I said. "The King's riders heard it at the ford this morning, from yours."

"Wynne."

"I did not volunteer. I was on my knees for an hour, and I did not volunteer." I made sure the guards could hear that too. "Say the truth, Torin, once, out loud."

He took a moment.

Behind me, I felt Ronan not move.

"You said the truth yourself," Torin said, a little less warmly. "You rejected me in the middle of the border, in front of every wolf I have, because your feelings were hurt. I'm willing to forgive that."

"You're willing to forgive me."

"I've offered a swap. Odette for you. It's more than fair."

"Odette isn't a price either," I said. "Keep her. You seem to like her."

One of the riders on the road laughed, then pretended to cough.

Torin's color rose.

He looked past me, finally, at the man standing a few paces behind my shoulder.

"Your Majesty," he said, stiff. "My Luna is not well. She's not thinking clearly."

"Your Luna," Ronan said, in his slow, rough voice, "rejected you in front of forty of your wolves. She was your Luna. Now she's my ward, and she sounds clear to me."

"This isn't over."

"It's over when she says it is," said Ronan. "Go home, Halloway."

Torin turned his horse so sharply that the animal reared.

I watched him ride down the mountain, and my chest didn't hurt at all.

When I came down, Edda was waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

She took my wrist without a word.

She walked me into her kitchen, sat me at the long table, and pricked my finger with a little steel needle.

She pressed a drop of my blood onto a glass slide, and held it up to the window.

She stood very still for a long time.

Her mouth went tight.

Then she put the slide down gently.

"Child," Edda said. "There is nothing wrong with you. There never was."

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