The Alpha's Unwanted Luna novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Neutral Ground

Fergus, the Ashcrest Alpha, offers the rejected Luna a cabin and a real job, and at dawn her brother arrives with news that the south fence is down.

The stone border post stood six miles from Blackmoor Hall, and I reached it at midnight with my boots soaked through.

I had not stopped walking once, because stopping meant thinking.

A lantern was burning on the post's little porch.

A man sat under it with a thermos between his feet and a pair of wire reading glasses pushed up into his hair.

I knew him from the dais.

He was Fergus Ashworth, Alpha of Ashcrest, the one who had been the only visiting Alpha not to touch his dinner.

"You left before the cake," I said.

"I left before the second toast," Fergus said. "I couldn't be at that table for another one."

He stood, and he didn't come any closer.

He was lean and tall, with a silver streak at his left temple.

He held himself still.

"This is neutral ground, so I can't invite you onto it," he said.

"But the cabin behind me is on Ashcrest land, and I can offer you that."

"Why?"

"Because it's midnight, and you have no coat."

I looked down.

He was right.

I had walked out of that hall in a cardigan with one bag.

My coat was still hanging on a hook in the east room.

"I'm not a charity case," I said.

"No," Fergus said. "You're the woman who spent a year making that pack look competent."

I went very still.

"I sat three seats from your husband all week," he said.

"His roads were plowed, his books were balanced, and the south fence hummed like a church organ."

"He didn't do any of it. I watched him not do any of it."

He took the thermos from the floor and held it out at arm's length.

"It's coffee. If you want to throw it at me, I'll understand."

I took it.

It was hot, and it was good, and my hands finally began to shake.

He let me do that without a word, which I counted in his favor.

"I'll tell you plainly what I want, because I'd rather say it than make you guess," he said.

"Ashcrest's wards are held together by a man who hums and a lot of luck."

"I want a warden who knows what she's doing. Real salary, a contract in your name, and a door that locks from the inside."

"No," I said.

"Tomorrow, then."

"No tomorrow either."

"All right. I'll ask again when you've slept."

I laughed, and it came out cracked.

"You're very polite for a man who just offered me a job in the dark."

"I'm not done," he said, and he looked almost embarrassed.

"I should also tell you that I think you're remarkable. That has nothing to do with the job, and you can say no to both."

I stared at him.

"That is the least subtle thing anyone has said to me in thirteen months."

"I'm told subtlety is how people end up at the wrong end of a table."

It was the first thing that day that made me want to smile.

I didn't, but I wanted to, and I think he saw it.

The cabin behind the post had a woodstove, a quilt that smelled of cedar, and a key on the inside of the door.

I locked it and sat on the edge of the bed, and the coffee went cold in my hands.

I did not cry.

I turned my right hand over instead.

There was a pale scar across the palm.

I had cut it open on the south stone the first night I did Luna's work, the way the old books said.

It was burning.

Not much, only warmth.

The line pulled gently toward the south, six miles away, where the territory I had just left lay dark and open.

I pressed my thumb into the scar and felt the stones answer, far off and faint.

It was like someone knocking on the other side of a wall.

Nine stones, and none of them lit.

I should have been glad.

I lay down on the cedar quilt with my boots on and told myself it was none of my business.

Toward dawn the knocking in my palm stopped, and that was worse.

I woke to wolf claws on the cabin steps.

Someone was pounding on the door, and Fergus's voice said, quietly, "Ismay, there's a boy here. He ran the whole way."

I opened the door.

Linus stood on the porch in a torn jacket, bent over with his hands on his knees.

His cowlick stood straight up, and his breath tore in and out of him.

He was sixteen, he was my father's son, and he was the only person at Blackmoor who had ever said goodnight to me.

"Izzy," he gasped, and he looked up at me with eyes gone wide and wolfish. "The south fence is down."

"It can't be."

"It went out at midnight, the whole row of stones, one after another."

He grabbed my cardigan in both fists.

"They don't know how to raise it. Nobody knows how to raise it."

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