The Alpha's Unwanted Luna novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: What He Did

"What does it say?" I asked.

"Noon."

"Gwendolen."

The old woman looked at me with eyes like two pale stones in a creek.

"I kept it thirteen months because your father made me swear on his deathbed," she said.

"I have been ashamed every new moon since. That is all I can give you tonight."

She turned and went down the steps, and one of Fergus's wolves fell in beside her without being asked.

I stood in the doorway and watched them go into the dark.

I did not shut the door.

An hour later, someone stopped at the edge of the cabin's firelight and didn't come any closer.

Eamon had been standing at the border post for a long time.

I could tell, because his hair was damp with frost and his hands were shoved into his coat pockets to keep them from doing something.

"I'm not here to ask you to come home," he said.

"Good."

"I'm here to tell you something I didn't say in front of anyone. If you want me gone after, I'll go."

I stepped back from the door.

He came in and stayed by the wall, big and quiet, with the stove lighting the red in his beard.

"Tell it, then."

He took a breath.

"At the feast," he said, "I knew exactly what I was doing."

I waited.

"In a year, you never asked me for one thing. Not a word, not a coat, not a chair."

"I sat across from you every morning and thought, there is nothing in her I can reach."

He stared at the floor.

"So I put Dacia in your chair. I wanted you to fight me for it. I wanted to see you want something."

The stove ticked.

I was so angry that for a second I couldn't feel my hands.

"That's the worst thing I've ever heard you say," I said.

"I know."

"You humiliated me in front of every Alpha in the county to see whether I could be hurt."

"Yes."

"I did fight." My voice shook. "I fought the only way you left me. I walked out."

"I know. It's the best thing anyone's ever done to me."

I looked at him.

He was not asking me to be kind.

He was standing there taking it.

My anger didn't go away.

It changed shape, and it settled somewhere low in my body, and it was hot.

"Take off your coat," I said.

He went very still.

"Ismay."

"I didn't say you could talk. Take it off."

He took it off.

His shirt followed, one-handed, because of the bandage.

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