The Alpha Who Rejected His Queen novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Moon Queen's Daughter

Wystan takes Ilse to Silverfen, where the pack refuses a rejected wolf and a fighter challenges her. She beats him, and under the moon she shifts for the first time into a white-silver wolf with moon-white eyes.

Wystan Sark drove us twenty miles into the mountains without saying a word.

I sat with my bag on my knees and watched the dark trees go by.

My head still rang where it had hit the bridge rail.

I did not want to think about the guards.

Finally I said, "You said you waited six years."

"Since you turned eighteen." He kept his eyes on the road. "That's when the Moon line's mark wakes up in a wolf. I felt it across two territories."

"What mark?"

"I'll show you at home."

Home was a long timber lodge at the end of a gravel road, with a fire pit outside and fifty or sixty wolves standing around it.

They had come out to watch us arrive.

I got out of the truck, and the whole circle went quiet.

"Silverfen Pack," Wystan said. "This is Ilse Penhallow."

"She's the rejected one," a woman called from the back. "We all heard."

Wolves talk fast.

Iron Moon's rejection had traveled the whole mountain before I'd reached the bridge.

An older man stepped out of the circle with his arms crossed.

He was one of the pack's elders, gray at the temples, and he looked me over without any warmth.

"Wystan, no," he said. "A wolf the Alpha threw out in front of four hundred witnesses? She brings us trouble with Iron Moon. And she's bad luck."

"I didn't ask for your vote," Wystan said.

"You have to ask the pack for a new member. It's the rule."

"Then I'm asking."

Nobody said yes.

I stood in the firelight and felt the old, familiar feeling of being the extra girl at a table.

I had my bag over my shoulder, and I was already turning toward the road.

"I'll go," I said.

"Don't," Wystan said.

"She doesn't even smell like a wolf," a young man said from the circle.

He was big, with a shaved head and broad shoulders, and he was smiling.

"She smells like nothing. Look at her. A little orphan with a bruise on her head."

"Be quiet," the elder told him.

"I'm only saying what we all think." The young man walked into the open space in front of the fire. "Ring challenge. If she wants a place here, she can fight for it."

"That's not how we welcome people."

"It's how we welcome rejects."

Wystan's shoulders went stiff.

"Ilse doesn't have to do this," he said quietly. "That man is the strongest fighter in my pack. You've never shifted. He'll break your arm."

I looked at the big man in the ring.

I thought about Verity kissing my cheek.

I thought about Joran saying weak and the whole hall laughing.

I thought about the two guards who had shoved me against the rail and called me an orphan to my face.

I dropped my bag in the dirt.

"I'll fight him," I said.

The circle roared.

Wystan closed his eyes for one second.

Then he stepped aside and let me walk into the ring.

The fighter cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders.

"Don't cry," he said. "It's embarrassing when they cry."

He came at me hard and fast, with his fist cocked back.

I could see it coming.

That was the strangest part.

His shoulder dropped a half second before his arm moved, and my body already knew where to go.

I stepped left.

His fist went by my ear with a whistle.

I put my palm against his ribs and pushed, the same way I had on the bridge.

He flew sideways into the dirt and rolled.

The circle went silent.

He got up slowly, and he wasn't smiling anymore.

"Lucky," he said.

He came again, with both arms this time.

I stepped inside them and caught his wrist.

I could feel the pulse in it, and the muscle under it, and the strength I had never had a name for.

I turned his own weight against him, and he went to his knees with a grunt.

I held his arm behind his back.

"Say it," I said.

"Say what?"

"Say I'm somebody."

"You're somebody," he spat.

I let go, and he scrambled back on the dirt.

Nobody in the circle moved.

My heart was pounding, but I wasn't winded.

For the first time in my life, my body did not feel like something I had to carry.

Overhead, the clouds slid away from the moon.

Silver light fell down into the ring.

My skin began to burn.

It started at my spine and ran out into every limb, hot and sharp and sweet.

My bones groaned and bent.

"Ilse," Wystan said, sounding half afraid, half joyful. "Let her out. Let her come."

My wolf said, in that low clear voice, *Now.*

I dropped to my hands and let go.

It didn't hurt as much as I had always feared.

It felt like being let out at last.

When I opened my eyes I was standing on four paws in the ring, taller than the fighter had been on his feet.

My fur was white and silver.

I looked down at the dirt and saw my own reflection in a puddle.

The wolf looking back had pale, glowing eyes, white as the moon.

Every wolf in the Silverfen Pack went down on one knee.

Even the elder.

Wystan Sark smiled at me through the tears running down his face.

"There she is," he said. "The Moon Queen's daughter."

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