Eighth-Born Luna novel · Chapter 1 of 16
Chapter 1: Rejected on the Kitchen Floor
Tristan rejects Rosalie for her sister, slaps her silent and promises her to his friends; at the ceremony she collapses into a chair beside a tattooed stranger who grips her wrist and says "Stay."
"I, Tristan Hollowell, next Alpha of the Gray Moon Pack, reject you, Rosalie Ashdown, as my mate."
He said it while I was on my knees with a scrub brush in my hand.
The kitchen went quiet.
Six girls stopped chopping onions to watch.
Something tore behind my ribs.
My eyes filled before I could stop them.
"Look at you," Tristan said.
He nudged my bucket with the toe of his boot, and gray water sloshed over my knees.
"Soap on your elbows. Dirt under your nails. The weakest Omega in the pack. Did you really think I'd crown that?"
My sister Genevieve stood at his side in a silver gown.
She slid her arms around his neck and kissed him, slow, right over my head.
Then she looked down at me and laid a hand on her flat stomach.
She smiled.
I knew that smile.
It was the one she used when she'd already won.
Inside my head, Nyx, my wolf, let out a thin, broken howl.
For ten years I had told myself it would get better.
When Tristan became Alpha. When the bond clicked. When he remembered the boy who once shared his apples with me behind the smokehouse.
That boy was gone.
I set the brush down.
I wiped my face with the back of my wrist.
I stood up, and I looked him in the eye.
"I, Rosalie Ashdown, reject..."
His hand cracked across my cheek.
The floor came up and hit me.
My ear rang. I tasted copper.
Tristan crouched beside me, and his eyes went black at the edges.
"You don't have the right to reject me," he said, and his Alpha voice pressed down on my chest like a boot.
The words I'd been about to say died in my throat.
"Tonight, after the ceremony, you belong to whoever I say," he whispered. "My friends have been asking about you. They'll take turns."
The girls at the counter giggled.
Tristan wiped his palm on his jeans.
"Baby, the ceremony's starting," Genevieve said. "Alpha King Garrett is already on the road with his son."
"Then everything has to be perfect." He stood and pulled her against his side.
He glanced back at me.
"Embarrass her in front of the King, and by morning you'll wish I'd killed you."
They walked out together.
A kitchen girl crouched near my ear. "Look at the state of you. Nobody's lifting a finger to get you ready."
Another kitchen girl grabbed a fistful of my hair near the scalp.
The kitchen scissors went snip, snip, snip.
Brown hanks fell onto the wet tiles around me.
"There," the second girl said. "Now you match your face."
"They're here!" someone called from the door. "The Alpha King wants every she-wolf in the hall. Now!"
The girls shrieked and ran, fighting over who the King's son would pick.
I lay on the tiles.
"The Moon Goddess doesn't hand out second mates to wolves like us," Nyx said.
"No," I whispered. "She doesn't."
"Rosalie? Oh, Goddess."
Craig Dunn knelt beside me, red hair in his eyes, hands shaking.
He was the only one in this pack who had ever said my name kindly.
"They told me to bring you this." He held out a plain white dress. "The King ordered every she-wolf in the pack to the hall. Even you."
Then he leaned close.
"I heard Tristan in the yard. It's real, what he said. His friends are drawing straws for you."
He pressed something cold into my palm.
A key.
"Southern gate," he breathed. "Everyone's at the ceremony. No guards. Go when you can."
"Is she dressed yet?"
Beta Hugh filled the doorway, dark eyes crawling over my bruised face.
"Shame," he said. "I wanted to watch."
I yanked the dress on over my rags while Craig stood in front of me.
Hugh grabbed my arm and shoved me down the corridor toward the Grand Mating Hall.
"Keep your head down tonight, Omega," he said against my ear. "Draw one eye, and I'll make you wish you were never born."
I closed my fist around the key and my other hand around the gold locket at my throat.
My parents smiled inside it.
"Tonight we get out," I told Nyx. "Or we die trying."
The hall glowed with a hundred candles and silver flowers.
Tristan and Genevieve stood on the stage with the priestess.
Beside them sat Alpha King Garrett, gray at the temples, and an empty royal chair.
"Under the eyes of the Moon Goddess," the priestess called, "we witness a new Alpha and his Luna!"
The hall roared.
"I, Tristan Hollowell, accept Genevieve Ashdown as my chosen Luna."
Genevieve cut her palm with the silver blade and pressed it to his.
"I accept you as my Alpha."
The bond inside me tore wider, but it didn't let go.
I couldn't breathe.
I stumbled to the very back of the hall and dropped into the first empty chair.
My knee landed against someone's leg.
Heat ran up through my whole body.
The man beside me was enormous. Black tattoos ran down both his arms.
He was sitting alone, far from the stage, in the one corner nobody wanted.
I looked up.
Dark eyes locked on mine.
Nyx rolled over inside me.
She had never done that. Not even for Tristan.
I jerked up to leave.
His hand closed around my wrist.
"Stay," he said.
The music stopped.
Every head in the Grand Mating Hall turned toward us.
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