The Alpha Carried Her, So the Luna Cut the Bond novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Hospital She Built
Seven days after her son's death the Luna lies in her own hospital with silver in her leg while the Alpha carries another woman in, so she signs the severance, and he countersigns it laughing.
Seven days after her son drowned, Wynne Tennant's car left the coast road and rolled twice.
A piece of silver from the broken door went into her calf and stayed there.
Silver stops a wolf from healing, so the bone stayed broken and the wound stayed open.
She lay on a hospital bed while a doctor set her leg.
He asked her for the third time if he should call her family.
"No," Wynne said.
The nurse beside him looked at the faded crescent mark on Wynne's neck.
"You're the Luna of the Ashfall pack," the nurse said. "Alpha Garrick is upstairs in a private suite. Should I fetch him?"
That was when Wynne understood where the ambulance had taken her.
She had ordered this hospital built three years ago, with her own signature on the first page.
Every doctor in the corridor knew her face.
All of them looked at the blood on her leg, and all of them looked away.
"Fetch him if you like," she said. "I won't be asking."
Garrick Stonehall came down five minutes later.
He was grey under the eyes, as he had been all week.
He stood at the foot of the bed and frowned at the cast.
"You were in a crash," he said. "Why didn't you call me through the link?"
"It's a broken leg. It will mend."
She said it to her own knees.
He came around the bed and took her hand, and some colour came back into his face as he held it.
Wynne noticed that, and noticed it was the same every time he came to her tired.
In the first year of their bond she had cried over a stubbed toe, and he had carried her to the couch and sat with her all night.
He had grown colder each year, until he told her an Alpha could not keep soothing small feelings.
Now her leg was shattered, silver had burned in it for hours, and she had not made a sound.
Two nurses stood outside the door with their voices low.
"Calla scraped her knee at training, and the Alpha sent for five physicians," one whispered.
"He carried her in himself. Her feet haven't touched the floor since."
"And the Luna's leg is in pieces, and she came in alone."
Garrick had heard it too.
He looked at Wynne and waited the way he had waited a hundred times.
He was waiting for her to ask. He was waiting for her to be jealous, to cry, to make him choose between his wife and his oldest friend.
She did not look up.
"Calla fell during her beach run," he said at last. "I was passing, so I brought her in. Don't read anything into it."
"All right," Wynne said.
"You don't believe me?"
"I do." She lifted her eyes to his. "The Greaves family raised her. You told me on our wedding day she would always be your family."
A guard hurried in behind him.
"Alpha, Calla says her knee is hurting again. She won't let anyone but you change the dressing."
"This hospital has physicians," Garrick snapped. "I am not her doctor."
The guard dropped his head and backed against the wall.
Garrick turned back to Wynne, and his voice went soft.
"You're still angry about Eli. That day was an accident, Wynne. When you're well, we'll try for another child."
He reached for her hand.
She pulled it out of his and put it under the blanket.
A flash of shock crossed his face.
Before he could speak, a crutch clattered on the floor in the corridor.
Calla Greaves stood in the doorway with one hand on the frame.
A square of white gauze was taped over her knee, clean and flat.
"I heard Wynne had an accident," she said, very quietly. "I couldn't sit still. I'm so sorry about Eli. I haven't slept since."
She took two steps in and her good leg gave way.
Garrick crossed the room in one stride and caught her.
Calla's crutch swung out and came down on Wynne's cast.
Pain went through Wynne's leg to the hip.
Blood came through the plaster in a dark line.
Calla pressed her own scarf against it at once. "Oh no, oh, I'm so sorry."
Garrick did not look at the blood. He held Calla up by both arms.
"Wynne, don't make a scene," he said. "Look what you've done to her."
Wynne looked at the nurses in the doorway, and at the guard, and at the cast going red.
She took Calla's scarf off her leg and set it on the blanket.
"Bring me a severance form," she said to the nurse.
Nobody moved.
"Every ward keeps one in the desk drawer. I wrote the law. Bring it."
The nurse went.
Garrick laughed, one short breath through his nose.
"Wynne."
The nurse came back with a single sheet. Wynne signed it on her knee, in front of all of them.
Under the line the law was printed plain: if the Alpha countersigns, the bond ends at the next new moon, seven nights away.
Garrick looked at the sheet and then at her face, and saw no tears in it.
He took the pen from the nurse and signed under her name in one smooth stroke, smiling.
"Seven nights," he said. "You'll be at my door by the third."
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