The Neglected Girl Chosen by the Moon Goddess novel · Chapter 1 of 16
Chapter 1: The Silver Moon
On Ivy's forgotten birthday the Goddess's mark rises on her wrist instead of her sister's, and her mother tells her to take it off, until the Alpha King says, "Let go of her."
On the night I turned twenty-one, my mother handed me a tray of deviled eggs and told me to stand behind the tables.
"Tonight isn't about you, Ivy," she said. "Try not to be seen."
She said it to the side of my head.
She was already looking past me at my little sister.
Lottie stood in the middle of Moonstone Clearing in white silk that moved when she breathed.
Three women from the pack were pinning tiny pearls into her hair.
Every unmated she-wolf in Hollowcreek had come to the Choosing in her best dress.
I had come in Lottie's old green one from two summers ago.
The hem was let down and the seam under the arm was pulled.
I set the eggs on the long table between the cider and the rolls.
Nobody at my house had said happy birthday.
Only Tilda had.
She had knocked on the laundry room window at dawn with a honey cake wrapped in a dish towel.
"Twenty-one," she'd said through the glass. "Eat it all yourself."
I had eaten half and saved half under my cot.
Now the whole pack stood in a ring around the clearing.
Two hundred wolves in their good coats, waiting for the moon.
Once a generation, the Moon Goddess picks one pack.
On the Silver Moon, she picks one girl in it.
A silver crescent rises on the inside of that girl's wrist, and she belongs to the Goddess and to the Alpha King.
This year the sign had fallen on Hollowcreek.
My mother had been getting Lottie ready for it since Lottie was six.
Voice lessons. Posture lessons. A white dress ordered from Seattle.
Nobody had ordered me anything.
I was the middle one.
My brother Anson was the heir. Lottie was the pretty one.
I was the one who never shifted.
At the far end of the clearing, a black truck rolled up the gravel and stopped.
The whole pack went quiet.
A man got out of the passenger side.
He was taller than anyone in the clearing, and the wolves nearest him stepped back without deciding to.
He wore a dark wool coat and no tie.
There was a thin scar through his left eyebrow.
"The Alpha King," someone whispered by the cider.
Bastian Rook.
I had seen his name in the pack newsletter and never his face.
My father crossed the grass to meet him with his hand already out.
"Your Majesty. Welcome to Hollowcreek. Clifford Redfern."
"Just Bastian is fine."
My father turned and swept his arm toward the ring.
"My family. My mate, Portia. My son, Anson."
He put his hand on Lottie's shoulder.
"And my daughter, Charlotte."
My daughter.
Singular.
I was eleven feet away holding a serving spoon.
The Alpha King's eyes moved across the clearing once.
They went past Lottie. They went past the tables.
Then they came back to me and stayed a second too long.
I looked down at the eggs.
Tilda walked into the center of the ring with her long white braid over one shoulder and her keeper's staff in her hand.
"It's time," she said. "Unmated daughters of Hollowcreek. Step into the light."
Eleven girls stepped forward.
My mother glanced at me and gave the smallest shake of her head.
Stay there.
So I stayed there.
Clouds were moving fast over the ridge.
The moon came out from behind them all at once.
White light fell across the clearing and over the grass and the girls and the tables.
Over me.
My left wrist started to burn.
It was a cold burn, the kind you get holding ice too long.
I turned my hand over.
A thin line of silver was rising under my skin.
It curved.
It closed into a crescent, bright enough to throw a little light on my palm.
I dropped the serving spoon.
It hit the table and bounced into the eggs.
Somebody near me gasped.
Then somebody else.
The circle turned, one face at a time, until two hundred wolves were looking at the girl behind the food.
In the middle of the clearing, Lottie was staring down at her own bare wrist.
She turned it over.
She turned it back.
There was nothing on it.
"No," she said. "No, no, that's wrong."
My mother crossed the grass faster than I had ever seen her move.
She grabbed my forearm hard enough that my fingers went numb.
She yanked the sleeve of the green dress down over the mark.
"Take it off," she said through her teeth. "Whatever you painted on, take it off. Now."
"I didn't paint anything."
"You've ruined your sister's night. Take it off."
Her nails dug in through the fabric.
The silver burned brighter under them.
Across the clearing, a voice cut through the whole pack.
"Let go of her."
The Alpha King was walking toward us.
He didn't hurry.
He didn't need to.
Every wolf between us moved out of his way.
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