No Longer Luna novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Moon Gate

On Harvest Moon eve, both packs stood on the lawn of the Saltmere pack house and waited for a gate to tell them who was lying.

Torches burned along the grass.

The moon gate stood at the far end, twelve feet of white roses wound over silver wire, and the full moon sat right above it.

Four hundred wolves ringed it.

Alpha Boyd stood at the foot of the gate with his arms folded.

"One pair at a time," he said. "The heir first."

Colton walked out on the grass, and Calista walked beside him in a gown of pale silver with the long gloves still on.

She was smiling.

It was a perfect smile, and I watched it hold.

"If a pair is true," Boyd said, "the gate will know. If it doesn't, nobody says a word against either of you. Go."

Colton took her gloved hand.

They stepped under the roses together.

Nothing happened.

The wire stayed dull, and the roses hung there in the torchlight, only flowers.

A murmur ran around the ring.

"Again," Boyd said.

They walked it again, and again the gate stayed dark.

Calista's smile began to slip.

"It needs the mark," she said, loud and bright. "Papa says it can't wake without the mark. We said that."

"That's true," Lowell Drummond called out from the front of the crowd. "An unmarked bond is quiet."

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