The End of Us novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Empty Chair
Quinton and his mother leave the Founders' Night toast for his brother's widow, and Isla lays down her Luna's pendant and walks out in front of forty wolves. The elder warns her Maud will name Marina tonight.
Forty wolves watched my mate stand up in the middle of the Founders' Night toast and walk out.
Quinton's phone had buzzed once against the table.
He read the screen, and his jaw went tight.
"It's started," he told the Hall. "The baby's three weeks early."
The baby was his older brother's.
His brother had died in a car crash ten months ago, and the widow was carrying his child.
Quinton's mother was already out of her chair and reaching for her coat.
"Isla, you'll finish the evening for us," she said. "That poor girl needs family around her. You understand."
I understood.
I had understood three times since the funeral.
The last time Quinton left me, I lost our baby alone in the pack clinic.
I stood up with my glass still in my hand.
"Quinton, I want to come with you."
He bent and kissed the top of my head. "Stay and finish the toast. Say something kind about the founders. I'll be back before dessert is cleared."
"I'm your mate. I should be there."
"You're my Luna," he said. "The pack needs to see you in your seat. You know that."
He was already looking at the door.
Then they were gone, and the doors closed behind them, and the Hall went quiet.
Forty faces turned toward me.
Nobody picked up a fork.
Behind the head table stood the oath stone, a grey block as tall as my hip, set into the wall when the pack was founded.
I put my palm on it to steady myself.
It was warm under my hand, the way it always was.
Quinton had told me once that stones don't do that.
He had laid his own hand on it for a full minute and felt nothing.
I set my glass down, said, "Excuse me," and went out through the side door into the corridor.
I called Ginny.
Ginny Roark had been my best friend since my first week at the Dunstan Hall, and she worked nights in the maternity ward at St. Anne's.
She answered on the first ring. "Isla? Aren't you at the dinner?"
"Quinton just left for the hospital with his mother. He says Marina's in labor."
"I'm looking at her chart right now," Ginny said.
Her voice dropped.
"Isla, her water didn't break. She was admitted at five o'clock for an induction. Your mother-in-law, Maud, signed the order herself."
I leaned my back against the wall.
"Maud called us this afternoon," Ginny said. "She asked for the private room in the Dunstan wing. She told the doctor the baby had to be born before midnight tonight."
"Why midnight?"
"She said it was pack business. She said it to the head nurse like it was nothing."
"And Quinton?"
"He's not here yet. But his name is on the visitor list for tonight. It was added at four."
At four o'clock Quinton had been sitting beside me in the car, telling me to wear the green dress.
I thanked Ginny and hung up.
Then I walked back into the Hall.
Every head followed me as I crossed the floor to my chair.
I picked up my coat from the back of it.
One of the council elders stood up at the far end of the table.
He was the oldest wolf in the room, white-haired, and he had been kind to me since the day I arrived.
"Luna," he said quietly, "I have to tell you the law, and I'm sorry for it."
"Tell me."
"On Founders' Night, a Luna who leaves the Hall before the last toast gives up her seat until the next full moon. The Alpha's mother may name who sits in it."
The room was so quiet I could hear the candles.
Maud had known that law for thirty years.
Quinton knew it too.
That was why he had kissed my head and told me to stay in my seat.
They had not left me behind by accident.
They had left me a chair to guard so I would not follow.
I unclasped the silver moon from around my neck.
It was the Luna's pendant, and Maud had put it on me herself at my mating ceremony.
I laid it on my dinner plate, beside the untouched bread.
"Say something kind about the founders for me," I told the elder.
Then I put on my coat in front of forty wolves.
So I walked out.
Behind me, the elder spoke again, very low, and every word of it carried across the silent Hall.
"Luna, if you cross that door, she will name Marina tonight."
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