The Eclipsed Life of Luna Mischa novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Second Mate
At the pack's first mating ball in twenty years, Mischa's mate of two decades scents a second mate and claims her in front of everyone, and Mischa refuses the rota in public, until the girl's father walks up to the top table: the loan shark she beat twenty years ago.
Twenty years after I found my mate in that hall, I watched him find another one.
It happened between the soup and the lamb.
The great hall was full for the first time since Duncan and I took over the pack.
Three hundred of our wolves. Eleven allied Alphas at the top table. Candles in jam jars, because jam jars were cheap.
I had planned every chair.
It was our first mating ball in twenty years.
For twenty years we couldn't afford one.
Duncan's parents died and left us four million pounds in debt, and I paid off the last of it eleven months ago.
The Alpha of Coldwater lifted his glass to me. "To the Luna who balanced the books."
The whole table laughed.
Duncan squeezed my knee under the tablecloth, the way he always did.
Then the moon came up over the lake, and his hand went still.
His nostrils flared.
He breathed in, long and slow, and his chair scraped back.
He didn't look at me.
He walked down the middle of the hall, and three hundred wolves went quiet one table at a time.
He stopped near the back, at the Harrow Fell table.
The one pack none of us knew.
A girl in a pale pink dress stood up.
She was small and blonde and very young, with bracelets halfway up both arms.
Duncan reached out and cupped her face.
Gently. The way he used to cup mine.
I braced for the pain.
Every wolf knows the pain of betrayal. When your mate touches another she-wolf, it's a knife under the ribs.
Paul's hand closed on my arm. My Gamma was ready to hold me up.
Half the top table was watching me instead of Duncan.
I waited.
Nothing came.
No knife. No ache. My wolf lay down inside me and put her head on her paws.
Paul frowned at me.
"I'm fine," I said, and I lifted his hand off my arm. "It's the Goddess's will."
Down the hall, Duncan raised the girl's hand high.
"My pack! The Goddess has blessed me with a second mate. And a second Luna."
His voice was full of pride.
He still hadn't looked at me.
A few wolves clapped, because they didn't know what else to do.
The girl's smile slipped. Her eyes found me at the top table.
I gave her a small nod.
She bowed her head to Duncan. "I'm so happy, Alpha. I'll learn everything from your first mate."
Duncan laughed and walked her up the hall with his hand on her back.
"Sweetheart, this is Bethany."
Sweetheart. He had called me that since we were nineteen.
"Hello, Bethany," I said.
She pressed into his side, and her lip shook.
"Please, Luna. It's the Goddess's will. Please don't ask him to reject me."
The whole hall heard it. She made sure of that.
I raised an eyebrow. "I wouldn't dare. If Duncan accepts you, so do I."
Duncan frowned down at her.
"Bethany, what was that? Mischa would never come between us. I brought you over to say hello."
He took her hand off his sleeve.
She stared up at him.
She had played her hand too early, and she knew it.
Duncan turned to the room with his arms open.
"Two Lunas, one Alpha. We'll keep it fair. Alternate nights, alternate seats at council. The three of us will be very happy."
This time the clapping was louder.
The Coldwater Alpha's grandmother, at the far end, didn't clap at all.
I stood up.
The microphone was still on the lectern from my welcome speech. I picked it up.
"Thank you, Alpha," I said. "Since we're making announcements."
Duncan smiled at me. He thought I was going to welcome her.
"I won't be on a rota. I'm not a shift at the chip shop."
Somebody at the Coldwater end choked on his wine.
"Tonight I'm moving my things into the boathouse cottage. The Alpha suite is all yours, Bethany."
Duncan's smile froze.
"Mischa," he said under his breath. "Not here."
"Here is where you said it."
I turned to the girl.
"And the charter rule stands. A new Luna doesn't sign for the treasury until she's served a year."
Bethany blinked. "What rule?"
"The one I wrote after this pack nearly went under. Ask anyone at the top table."
The Coldwater Alpha set down his glass. "Hear, hear."
Two more Alphas nodded.
Duncan looked along the row of our allies.
He couldn't refuse in front of eleven of them, and he knew it.
"Of course," he said. "The rule stands."
Bethany's bracelets clicked as she let go of his arm.
I sat down and cut my lamb.
My hand was steady.
Paul leaned in close. "Remind me never to owe you money."
"You owe me twenty quid from the darts."
"I'm aware. I'm frightened."
I nearly laughed.
Then a heavyset man in tweed came up the hall from the Harrow Fell table.
He was carrying a glass of our wine.
On his little finger was a gold signet ring.
I knew that ring.
Twenty years ago I watched it tap the table in the wolfen council hall while they voided his loans as usury.
Six hundred thousand pounds at forty percent, lent to Duncan's parents while they drowned.
I was twenty, with a new degree and a borrowed suit, and I won.
He bowed to Duncan.
"Clive Mabbott, Alpha of Harrow Fell. Bethany's father."
Then he turned to me and smiled.
"I told you I'd sit at your table one day, girl."
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