Mating Season: Luna Trials novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: House Rules

Tilly, Imogen and the lodge; Hiram's bond orders Juniper to steal the ledger tonight and Delphine's light is already on.

They gave us rooms in pairs, and I got Tilly.

The room had two white beds, a window onto the black lake, and a camera in the corner pretending to be a smoke alarm.

Tilly sat on her bed and hugged a pillow.

"He claimed you," she said. "On the first night. Do you know how many viewers watched that?"

"I don't want to know."

"Four million. They said so at the door."

I sat on my own bed and pulled off the green dress.

Under it was a gray tank top, and under my pillow I slid the burner phone Hiram had hidden in my bag.

Tilly watched me with huge eyes.

"Are you scared of him?"

"I'm scared of the cameras," I said.

That was true enough.

She smiled and told me about herself in a rush.

She was an omega from a small pack in Idaho, twenty-five, a dental assistant.

She wanted a mate who liked dogs and Sunday pancakes.

She didn't want a crown at all.

I liked her before she finished the second sentence, and that was a problem.

At nine o'clock a bell rang in the hall.

Every woman in the lodge poured downstairs in her robe.

Delphine Fontenot stood on the landing with a tablet against her hip.

She was blonde and calm, and she looked at us.

A tall pale wolf with a calm face sat at her heel, and it never looked at us at all.

"Ladies, the rules," she said. "Three trials, held under the moon. Each night one woman is eliminated by the Well."

A ripple went through the room.

"Eliminated how?" someone asked.

"They go home," Delphine said. "With our thanks."

Her smile never moved.

"Alphas may claim a woman publicly. A claimed woman is safe from the first cut. Rook has claimed Number Nineteen."

Every head turned toward me.

I felt Imogen's stare on my neck.

She stood two steps away in a white silk robe, her red hair brushed to a shine.

"A scent mark isn't a mating," she said, loud and bright. "It's just territory."

"Then it's his territory, not yours," I said.

Tilly made a small noise that might have been a laugh.

Imogen's smile came back, bigger.

"Good luck, Nineteen. Girls without a pack never last."

Delphine tapped her tablet.

"Curfew at ten. Lights out at eleven. Cameras are on at all times, in all rooms except the baths. Sleep well."

We went upstairs.

I lay awake until the lodge went silent.

At eleven forty the burner buzzed under my pillow.

It was a single message, and I knew the sender without reading.

The bond in my chest pulled hard.

"Tonight," the text said. "Delphine's office, second floor. The payment ledger is in the gray cabinet. Photograph every page."

Under it came a second line.

"Do it, or I pull the leash."

My mother had died when I was fourteen.

Hiram had told me so himself, standing in our kitchen with his hat in his hand.

The bond tightened around my ribs as I hesitated.

It was an Alpha's order, and a wolf like me felt it as pain.

I pressed my hand to my sternum and swung my feet to the floor.

"Where are you going?" Tilly whispered from the dark.

"Bathroom."

"Take the left stairs. The right ones creak."

I stopped with my hand on the door.

"How do you know that?"

"I spent an hour counting the cameras," Tilly whispered. "You count too, I saw you."

I had.

Fourteen in the common rooms, none in the back stairwell.

My shoulders came down.

"Go to sleep," I said.

"Be careful, Juniper."

I slipped out into the hall barefoot with my shoes in my hand.

The lodge felt like an animal holding its breath.

I took the left stairs, climbed one flight and walked down a hall lined with framed photographs of last season's winners.

Smiling women, smiling men.

I stopped at the fourth frame.

The woman in it had amber eyes, and her hand sat on the arm of a dark-haired Alpha I knew.

Under the picture was a brass plate.

Last Season's Luna, it said, and nothing else.

I kept going.

At the end of the hall a door stood half open on the left, and a strip of yellow light lay across the carpet.

Delphine's office.

I stopped.

Someone had turned the lamp on before me, and a drawer inside slid shut with a soft click.

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