Luna Lola: The Moon Wolf novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Rite

Wynne's POV

The silver chain on my wrists had been burning for six hours.

They had knelt me on the Stone at dusk, in the same spot where Dane had once held out his palm.

The links were as thick as my thumbs, and where they touched my skin the flesh had blistered and gone white.

I could not feel my hands.

I could not feel my wolf either, only a far pale shape behind a wall, scratching.

Around me the meadow was packed with Ashfall wolves, two hundred and more, with torches in their fists.

None of them looked at me.

A few of them were crying.

"Nobody has to be hurt," Dane said.

He lay on the bier beside me, propped up with a rolled coat under his head.

He had shrunk in the weeks since I'd seen him.

His cheeks had caved and his hands trembled on the blanket, and his smile was exactly the same.

"I'm sorry for the rope," he said. "I wanted to ask you nicely. You wouldn't have come."

"You put a bullet in me."

"I put a lie on a piece of paper. Other people held the gun."

"Did you hear what you just said?"

"I'm very tired, Wyn." He closed his eyes. "I've never been so tired. I only want what was mine to feel like it's mine again."

"I was never yours."

"You were my mate."

"You rejected me."

"I made a mistake."

"You made a plan."

Behind him the old woman in the grey shawl lifted her hands.

She had a flat, patient face, the face of a woman who had done this before to other girls, and she did not look at me once.

"The moon is up," she said. "It's time."

Ilsa's father stood at her shoulder with his arms folded.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Luna Lola: The Moon Wolf from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.