Stick With Your Rotten Moon novel · Chapter 1 of 20
Chapter 1: The Autumn Feast
Four years spent hiding—you learn to carry that weight at the nape of your neck.
I wore it under my braid, a silver crescent the size of a fingernail that burned every time he walked into a room.
That night it burned from the moment I reached the gate.
Red Fang's autumn feast filled the great log hall, torches blazing on the pillars and three hundred wolves on their feet, drinking from the pack barrel.
I stood by the door in my Beta warrior's leather jacket.
It was my post.
From there I could see everything, and no one looked at me.
Then Ambrosio Valderrama walked in from the back, and the music cut off.
My Alpha.
Tall, broad-shouldered, with a trimmed beard and a black fur coat.
And on his arm, a woman.
I couldn't breathe.
Light brown hair loose over her shoulders, a white wool dress, a good-girl smile.
And the eyes.
Gray, a silver gray like water under the moon.
My father's eyes.
Mine.
"Pack," Ambrosio said, his deep voice filling the hall. "I present Mirta Aldunate, who's come home."
My half-sister.
The daughter my father had with a she-wolf from the pack, raised far away in Piedra Blanca, whom I'd seen twice in my entire life.
Ambrosio wrapped his arm around her waist.
In front of everyone.
With the same hand that, four years ago, had taken me for the first time on a full-moon night in his room, and had looked into my eyes for a long while.
"You know, Nereida?" he'd said then, his voice hoarse. "What fascinates me most about you are your beautiful eyes."
I was touching them now with my gaze, on another's face.
The murmurs started.
Someone said, "How much she looks like her sister."
Another: "But softer."
And a woman's voice behind me, very low: "They say the Alpha is going to make her his Luna."
I didn't move.
Mirta lifted her chin and looked around with modesty.
Her gaze reached me.
And she smiled.
Not a greeting smile.
A smile of someone who's won something and wants it to show.
I waited an hour.
An hour of toasts, of handshakes, of his hand on her back.
When he finally left the hall with two of his wolves, I followed him down the office hallway.
He closed his office door behind him.
I opened it without knocking.
"Nereida," he said without turning. "Close it."
I closed it.
He poured himself a glass of liquor from the bottle on the shelf and downed it in one gulp.
"Tell me what I saw isn't what it looks like."
"I don't know what you saw."
"I saw my sister with your arm around her waist."
"She's a guest."
"You introduced her as the she-wolf coming home. They say she'll be Luna."
Finally he turned.
His brown eyes looked at me with a coldness I'd never seen in him.
Or that I hadn't wanted to see.
"My father left me a condition, Nereida. To be a full Alpha, my Luna must be of pure pack blood. Yours isn't."
"My father was your Beta."
"Your mother was a rogue."
He said it without raising his voice.
Like someone commenting on the weather.
"Four years," I said. "Four years pretending to be just another warrior so no one would suspect. Four years accepting that you'd leave me out of the pack photos, the dinners, the meetings. You said it was to protect your title."
"And it was."
"And now she protects it."
A shadow crossed his face.
"Mirta has your eyes. People will see them in her and forget they ever saw them in you. It's better this way."
"Better for whom?"
"For everyone."
I swallowed.
The mark burned at my nape, as if an ember had fallen under my skin.
"Tell me," I said. "Look at me and tell me what I was to you."
Silence.
He poured himself another glass.
"Give you an explanation? What did you expect?" He shrugged. "It was just a temporary mark, Nereida. For that year. Nothing more. To me, you've never been more than a friend."
A friend.
Four years.
I didn't cry.
I didn't have the tears, or the air, or the will to let him see anything on my face.
I nodded once, slowly.
"I understand."
"I knew you would." He sat down behind the desk. "You're my best warrior. You'll keep your post. And Mirta will do well to have someone like you protecting her."
"Of course."
I left the office with steady steps, my back straight, my nails digging into my palms.
The hallway was empty.
I leaned back against the log wall, closed my eyes, and opened a mental link with the only person who wasn't in that hall.
A thread of light to the other side of the river.
I hadn't used it in years.
Silver Crest. Zacarías.
He answered on the first heartbeat.
"Nereida."
His voice sounded clear inside my head, as if he were standing beside me.
"Three months ago you made me an offer," I said. "To be your pack's head warrior."
"And you said no."
"Now I'm saying yes."
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