I Refused to Be His Luna Again novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The White Wolf

The Council hears of the white wolf and Hallvard offers Marit a patrol post; she throws the Beta in front of the patrol and tells Anders he is not her Alpha yet.

By breakfast the whole pack was talking about the white wolf.

Three patrol wolves had sworn they saw her on the ridge, and the fourth said she was the size of a pony.

By nine, Hallvard Kroll was standing on my grandmother's porch with his hat in his hands.

"Miss Solberg," he said. "May I come in? I'll only take a minute of your morning."

"Take two," my grandmother said, and let him in. "I'll put the kettle on."

He sat at our table like a guest in a church.

He was lean and grey at the temples, in a long dark coat, and he looked more tired than I remembered from the Moon Hall.

"I won't pretend I wasn't surprised yesterday," he said. "But I'm not here about that."

"Then why?"

"Torben's night shift followed the white wolf's tracks off the north ridge," he said.

"The tracks ended in a woman's boot prints, and the boot prints ended at your grandmother's back door."

"She ran that ridge in under nine minutes."

I said nothing.

"The pack hasn't had a white wolf in three generations," Hallvard said. "The old records call them moon-blooded. They're rare, and they're strong, and they're wasted if they're kept in a kitchen."

"I'm a border scout, Regent."

"You're a scout who wrote a wolfless girl's name on a Council form in front of three hundred people." His mouth twitched. "I'm not condemning you. I think it took a great deal of nerve."

My grandmother snorted into her tea.

"What I'd like," he said, "is to offer you a place on the East Gate patrol. Proper pay, proper rank, under Torben. No one will ask you anything about yesterday, and you won't owe anyone a seat at any table."

I felt something in my chest go very still.

The East Gate.

It was the one place in the whole territory I had been dreading and wanting at the same time.

"When do I start?" I said.

"Today, if you like."

He smiled warmly, and he stood and thanked my grandmother for the tea.

At the door, he turned back.

"For what it's worth," he said, "I hope my nephew finds his way to the right woman. But it doesn't have to be you, and no one should make you think so."

I thought it was the kindest thing anyone had said to me in two lives.

The patrol yard sat behind the gatehouse, a stretch of packed snow with a sparring ring marked out by old rope.

Twenty wolves stood around it with their arms folded.

Torben Rask waited in the middle, rolling his shoulders, grinning.

"Rule one on my patrol," he said. "Nobody walks the gate until they've been on their back in the snow."

"That's a new rule."

"I invented it this morning." He cracked his knuckles. "No wolf forms. Hands only. Whenever you're ready, Luna."

A few wolves laughed.

I did not.

I took off my coat and dropped it over the rope.

Torben came in fast and friendly, and I saw the shape of his first move before he made it.

I had watched him train recruits for nineteen years.

He swung left, and I stepped inside, caught his wrist, turned my hip, and put him on his back in the snow.

The yard went completely silent.

Torben lay there blinking up at the sky.

"Huh," he said.

"Rule one," I said, and I held out my hand.

He took it and let me haul him up, and then he started to laugh so hard he had to bend over.

"Did anyone else see that? Did all of you see that?" he said. "Marit Solberg just put me down flat on my back. I'm promoting her to my right hand, and any of you who complain can fight her."

The yard erupted.

Wolves slapped my back and shouted, and a big woman with a braid said, "Finally, someone to make him cry."

For a moment I stood in the middle of it with snow in my hair, and I thought I might cry myself.

In my first life, nobody had ever cheered when I won anything.

I had been the Luna, and Luna's work was quiet.

Then the cheering died out in a ripple, the way a crowd goes silent when a storm cloud walks over it.

Anders stood at the edge of the yard.

He was in his heavy black coat, with his hands in his pockets and his dark eyes on me.

He must have walked from the Alpha house without stopping.

"Torben," he said, "give us the yard."

"Sure," said Torben, and the whole patrol found something else to do very fast.

Anders crossed the packed snow to the rope and stopped on the other side of it.

"You're not walking a patrol," he said.

"I am. Hallvard signed the order this morning."

"My uncle doesn't have the right to put my Luna on the gate."

"I'm not your Luna."

His eyes flashed.

"You're the only woman in this pack the Council will name besides the one you wrote on that form," he said. "I'm not letting you put yourself where a rogue can hit you."

"You're not letting me?"

"Marit."

I picked up my coat from the rope and put it on, one arm at a time.

"You're not my Alpha yet," I said. "And I'll walk where I like."

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