The Luna He Failed to Protect novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Letter
At Cale's oath dinner Morwenna reads Sorrel's love letter to the pack, Cale calls her his sister, and Sorrel renounces the Ravelston name and signs the muster herself, then finds Cale's signature on her no-return orders.
My adoptive mother stood up at my stepbrother's oath dinner with my love letter in her hand.
I knew it was mine from across the hall.
Cream paper. Folded in thirds. The corner I'd torn off when I almost burned it.
I had hidden it inside my father's old field book, under my mattress, that morning.
"Before my son takes his oath as heir," Morwenna said, "the pack should hear what's been living under my roof."
Two hundred wolves went quiet over their plates.
Cale sat at the head table beside her in his new gray coat.
He was twenty-five, and tonight he would be named the next Alpha of Greyhollow.
I was twenty-two, and I had written him a letter I never meant to send.
"Morwenna," I said. "Don't."
She didn't look at me.
She unfolded it.
"'Cale. I don't know how to say this to your face, so I'm writing it down instead.'"
Somebody at the river table laughed.
"'I love you. Not the way I'm supposed to. I've tried to stop for a year, since the day you came home from the north and I didn't recognize you at the door.'"
My face went hot to the roots of my hair.
Cale's hand had gone flat on the table.
He didn't look at me either.
"'If you want me gone, I'll go. I'll take the room over the mill and never say it again. I just couldn't stand next to you tomorrow and lie.'"
Morwenna folded it back up and set it beside her wine glass.
"She signed it," she said. "Sorrel."
The silence after that was the worst sound I've ever heard.
Alder Ravelston pushed his chair back.
The Alpha was fifty-eight, gray in the beard, and he had taken me into his house at nine because my father asked him to with his last breath.
He didn't sound like that man now.
"Stand up, girl."
I stood.
"You were raised under my roof as his sister."
"I know."
"Then you know what this is."
Everyone in that hall knew the word for it.
Hearth-shame.
"Nothing happened," I said. "Not a kiss. Not a touch. Ask him."
Every head turned to Cale.
He was the only person in the room I'd ever told the truth to without thinking first.
He lifted his eyes to mine for one second.
Then he looked at his father.
"She's my sister," he said. "That's all she's ever been."
Something in my chest went very still.
Morwenna smiled into her glass.
"The law is clear," Alder said. "A season on the Ash Line. You leave tonight."
The Ash Line was the burned border in the south, where the rogues came over the ridges in packs.
My father had died there.
So had a lot of people Morwenna didn't like.
A murmur went down the long tables.
I heard someone say "poor thing" and someone else say "serves her right."
I looked at Cale again.
He was turning his oath ring on his finger.
He didn't stand up.
He didn't say a word for me.
I had spent a year memorizing the way he laughed with his whole chest.
I'd never once seen him look this small.
"Fine," I said.
Alder frowned. "Fine?"
I reached behind my neck and unhooked the silver Ravelston pendant I'd worn since I was nine.
I walked up the center aisle between the tables.
Wolves leaned back to let me pass.
I stopped in front of the Alpha and laid the pendant on the white cloth next to his plate.
"My name is Sorrel Vardy," I said, loud enough for the back of the hall. "My father was Sergeant Vardy, and he held the Ash Line for this pack for fourteen years."
Morwenna's smile thinned.
"I'm not your daughter," I told Alder. "I'm not his sister. Strike the adoption, or don't. I'm going south as my father's girl, not yours."
The muster book sat on its stand by the door for the heir's oath.
I took the pen off its chain and signed my own name on the first empty line.
Vardy, S. Volunteer. Ash Line.
Nobody would ever say they'd had to drag me.
When I turned around, Cale was on his feet.
"Sorrel."
That was all he said.
My name, like a question he had no right to ask.
"Enjoy your oath," I said, and walked out into the cold.
The garrison truck came at midnight.
The driver didn't speak to me.
I sat in the back on a bench with my duffel between my knees and my father's field book inside my coat.
Somewhere past the river bridge, the driver tossed a sealed envelope over his shoulder.
"Your orders," he said. "Commander wants them handed in unbroken."
I broke the seal.
The page was short.
Vardy, Sorrel, age twenty-two. Assigned to the Ash Line garrison under Commander Garth Coldwater.
Morwenna's brother.
Posting: no return.
I read it twice to be sure.
Everyone in Greyhollow knew what no-return meant.
You served until recalled.
And nobody was ever recalled.
At the bottom of the page were two signatures.
The first was Alder's heavy scrawl.
The second was neat and familiar, the hand that had written me birthday cards for thirteen years.
Cale Ravelston, Heir of Greyhollow.
The ink was dated that afternoon.
He had signed it before she ever stood up.
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