Mating Season: Luna Trials novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Number Nineteen
Juniper enters the televised Luna Trials on forged papers and Rook claims her on live air; he whispers that her Alpha sold her.
The camera was the size of a fist, and it was pointed straight at my mouth.
"State your name and pack," said the intake girl.
"Juniper Hallowell," I said. "No pack."
That was the first lie, and it came out smooth.
My papers said I was a rogue wolf from the Oregon coast.
They had cost Hiram Kavanaugh four thousand dollars and a favor.
He had pressed them into my hand at the Ironwood gate.
Now I stood in the marble lobby of the Cinder Lake Lodge, in a borrowed green dress, trying to look like I wanted a husband.
Twenty-three other women stood in a line beside me.
They had perfect hair and ranks printed on their name cards.
Mine said Nineteen, in the bottom third of the line.
The round-faced girl next to me, with blonde curls, whispered that her name was Tilly Applegate.
I was a guard wolf from a prison pack, and I was there to steal.
The bond in my chest gave a small, warning tug.
It was Hiram's command-bond, the leash an Alpha keeps on a wolf that he owns.
I had worn it since I was fourteen.
It tightened when I thought about running.
"Smile," the intake girl said. "Viewers vote on your face first."
I smiled.
A red light blinked above the door, and the producer, Delphine Fontenot, spoke through the speakers.
"Welcome to Mating Season, ladies. Tonight the Luna Trials begin."
The doors at the far end of the lobby swung open.
Six men walked in with the cameras walking backward in front of them.
Five of them were big, polished and bored.
The sixth was Rook Montrose.
I knew his face the way everyone did.
He was the Alpha of Redfern Pack, three seasons on air, the man the network called the Alpha of Alphas.
Black hair, amber eyes, a suit that fit.
He did not look bored.
He walked down the line of women without looking at a single face.
The other contestants leaned toward him.
I leaned back.
Then he stopped in front of me.
The whole lobby went quiet.
I could smell him, cedar and cold rain, and my wolf went stiff all along my spine.
"Number Nineteen," he said.
"That's my name tag," I said.
A few women laughed, nervous.
He didn't.
He took one step closer, close enough that his chest nearly touched mine.
"Mine," he said.
He said it to the room, loud and clear, for the cameras.
Then he put his hand on my bare shoulder and rubbed his wrist across my neck.
It was a scent mark.
Every wolf in that room knew what it meant, and every cell in my body shook with it.
An Alpha had just claimed me in public.
Gasps rolled down the line.
Somebody swore.
A camera swung in so close I saw my own face in its lens.
I did what any guard wolf would do.
I knocked his hand off my shoulder.
"I'm not anyone's," I said.
"You are for the next thirty days," Rook said.
"Not in your dreams."
"You don't know what I dream."
His voice had dropped, low enough to feel in my teeth.
It should not have worked on me.
My knees were not supposed to go soft.
A woman with red hair pushed through the line and stopped at his elbow.
She wore white and a smile like a knife.
"Rook, darling, don't scare the new girl," she said. "She doesn't even have a pack."
"She has me," said Rook.
The red-haired woman's smile cracked just a little.
"Imogen Lancaster," she said to me, sweet as poison. "I'm so sorry. He does this every season."
"He doesn't," said someone behind her, and the others whispered.
Rook ignored all of it.
He kept his eyes on mine.
I tried to step back, and my heel hit a marble stair.
His hand caught my elbow before I fell.
He pulled me up and into him, and the lobby spun.
"Careful," he said, quietly this time, just for me.
His mouth was next to my ear.
"Hiram Kavanaugh sold you to this show," he said. "Do not drink anything they hand you."
I felt a chill.
Nobody here knew that name.
Nobody here knew I had ever heard of Ironwood.
I looked up and saw the amber in his eyes had no joke in it.
"Who are you?" I whispered.
He let go of me and smiled for the camera.
"Your Alpha," he said, loud enough for everyone. "Welcome home, Nineteen."
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