The Cursed Luna's Tenth Awakening novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: You Wish For Death
On a battlefield of her dead pack, Sabine remembers nine deaths at Alpha Rorik's blade and finally does something new; he orders her bound alive.
Steel touched my throat, and I knew whose hand held it.
I was on my knees in the mud with the rain coming down on my head.
My left hand was pressed against a long wound in my belly.
Blood ran warm between my fingers and I could not make it stop.
The blade cut a shallow line under my jaw, and the blood from it ran down to my collarbone.
I did not have to look up.
Only one man in the world made the air go that heavy.
Rorik Haldane, the Alpha who had come to destroy us.
The fighting had ended a while ago.
I could hear boots in the mud, the rain, and the slow, wet sounds of men dying.
They were my men, the warriors of my own pack.
There was not a single one still standing.
I had given the order to hold this field, and I had watched every one of them fall.
I was going to die here too, on my knees.
And then it came back.
It hit me all at once, every life at the same time.
Nine lives.
Nine mornings of waking up in my own bed, with the sun on the window and no memory of anything.
Nine wars, and nine ends on this same ground.
The first time, I had charged him with my claws out and screamed his name.
His sword took my head before I finished the scream.
The fourth time, I had begged him to take my land and spare my people.
He had listened to every word with flat grey eyes, and then he pushed the blade through my chest.
The seventh time, I had run, and his wolf ran me down before I reached the edge of the field.
Every time, my pack was dead before the end.
And every time, my own Beta did the same thing.
My Beta, Harlan Crowe, held the east gate for me, and when our line began to bend he sounded the retreat horn.
Then he rode out with his guard, saving what he could, and the rest of us were left to the Ironclads.
Before every battle he had said the same thing to me, smiling, with a hand on my shoulder.
"The east gate is mine, Luna. Nothing gets past me."
I had believed him nine times.
Now I could see the horn sounding in my head, and I understood it was not cowardice.
It was timing.
"You wished for this," Rorik said above me.
His voice was low and level.
He said it every time, in exactly those words.
I remembered the swing that came after.
He would draw the sword back a hand's width, and it would come down clean.
There was a thing I had never noticed before, because I had never remembered enough to look.
I raised my eyes to his arm.
There was a braid of white hair tied round his left wrist, thin and worn, the knot gone dark with old blood.
The rain ran over it, and his hand stopped.
For one breath the sword did not move.
Then it settled again against my neck, as steady as before.
I had already tried fighting him, begging him and running from him.
There was one thing I had never tried.
I had never talked to him as though I was not afraid.
I could not feel my legs and I could barely draw breath.
But I looked straight up at him, past the sword, into the face of the man who had killed me nine times.
He was soaked and spattered with other people's blood.
He looked tired.
I had not expected that.
"Alpha Haldane," I said, and my voice came out rough but clear.
"You think I poisoned your river."
His jaw tightened.
"I know you did."
"Your mother drank from it at the spring thaw," I said.
"Her name was Edda."
The sword did not move, but something in his face did.
"She died on the fourth day, and you buried her under the white birch behind your hold."
Nobody outside the Ironclad Pack knew where she lay.
I knew because I had stood at that tree in a life I was not allowed to keep.
"Where did you hear that?" Rorik said.
"I saw it."
"Nobody has seen that."
"I watched you bury her," I said.
I pressed my bloody hand against his sword, and the edge cut into my palm.
I did not let go.
"Kill me now and you'll never find out who really did it."
The rain filled the quiet.
Behind him, one of his wolves growled and shifted its feet.
Rorik stared down at me.
His eyes went to my hair, where the white streak at my temple had grown to the roots, and then to the cut on my palm.
I thought of the nine times I had not spoken, and what it had earned me.
Then, very slowly, he drew the sword back from my throat.
Not for a swing.
He lowered it all the way to his side.
"Bind her," he said.
His men stared at him.
"Alpha," one of them said, "that's Sabine Marrow. She's the Luna."
"I know who she is."
Rorik slid the blade into its sheath, and he did not take his eyes off me.
"She lives. Bind her hands and bring her to the hold."
Rough rope closed around my wrists.
I felt it bite and I almost laughed.
In nine lives, I had never once been taken alive.
I had no idea what happened next.
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