The Moon She Waited Under novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Seventh Moon
On the seventh full moon her Alpha doesn't come to the ring, so in front of the whole pack Dessa releases him, and as the bond snaps her hands turn warm and every wolf on the slope lowers its head.
The whole pack was on the slope below the stone ring when the moon cleared the ridge.
That made it the seventh time they had watched me stand in the ring alone.
On every full moon, the Alpha and his mate stand in the ring together and speak the prayer.
It keeps their bond strong.
If one of them misses it, the bond gets thinner.
My hands were cold again.
They went cold on every full moon, and no glove or fire had ever fixed it.
The pack had come up the hill with lanterns and folding chairs and thermoses, as they did every month.
Kari stood at the front with her arms crossed and her jaw set.
Behind her, a toddler asked loudly why the Luna was by herself.
Nobody answered him.
Osric Dane, the eldest on the council, leaned on his stick beside the tallest stone.
He kept looking at the notch in the pines where the moon would sit when it was time to start.
"Dessa," he said quietly. "We have a little while yet."
"I know," I said.
The north path rustled, and Ilse came out of the trees with her healer's satchel bumping at her hip.
She had a grey wool coat over her arm.
It was Lucan's.
"There you are," Ilse said, out of breath.
She took both my cold hands in hers and rubbed them.
"He's still at the clinic. One of the pups spiked a fever and he wouldn't leave the family."
"It's the seventh moon, Ilse," I said.
"I know it is. I'm going to walk down and fetch him myself, and I'll drag him up here by the collar if I have to."
She pushed the coat into my arms.
"Hold this for him. It smells like the clinic, but it'll keep your hands warm until he gets here."
The coat smelled of lavender oil and antiseptic.
I stood there holding it while she hurried back down the north path.
She was so quick and so kind that I didn't think about it.
I only looked at the empty notch in the pines.
In seven months he had never offered a reason, and in the hallway at home he asked me about the patrol rota.
The moon rose to the notch in the pines.
Nobody on the slope was talking.
Osric tapped his stick once on the frozen ground.
"The prayer is spoken now or it is not spoken," he said. "Dessa McCurry, your mate is not here."
"No," I said.
"Then I'll say what the old law says, and I'll say it plainly so the whole slope hears it."
He turned toward the pack.
"A bond that has missed seven moons in a row may be ended by either mate, in this ring, before the moon."
A murmur went down the hill.
Somebody near the back said my name, and somebody else shushed them.
I looked at the coat in my arms.
Then I looked at the path Ilse had gone down.
Nobody was coming up it.
I had waited seven months because I was his Luna and I had made a promise.
He had never once asked me why I stood in the ring alone.
So I put the coat down on the nearest stone, and I stepped out of the ring.
"I'm Dessa McCurry," I said, loud enough for the back row. "I release Lucan Ferris from the bond."
"The moon heard me," I said, "and so did all of you."
Something in my chest came loose.
It wasn't pain.
It was the cold going out of me all at once, after two years.
On the slope, the pack gasped.
Down at the treeline, somebody was running.
Lucan came out of the pines at full speed, with no coat and his shirt half buttoned.
Ilse was a few steps behind him, panting.
"I tried to get him here sooner," she called up the hill. "Dessa, I tried."
Lucan stopped halfway up the slope and put his hand flat against his own chest.
His face went white.
"Dessa," he said. "What did you do?"
I walked down the hill toward him.
The pack opened a path for me without anyone telling them to.
"I stopped waiting," I said.
He opened his mouth and nothing came out.
I kept walking.
I passed him close enough to feel the heat coming off him, and I didn't turn my head.
My hands were warm.
For the first time in my life, on a full moon, they were warm.
Behind me, the dogs the pack had brought up the hill went quiet one by one and lay down in the grass.
Then the people did what the dogs had done, the only way they could.
Every single one of them lowered their head as I went by.
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