The Moon She Waited Under novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Door in the Rain

Lucan arrives at Kari's door with a note in Dessa's handwriting that she never wrote, and as they fight over the seven missed moons her bones begin to move and she runs.

Kari's cottage sat behind the pack kitchen, and by midnight the rain was coming down on its tin roof hard enough to drown out the kettle.

Kari had pushed a mug of tea into my hands and sworn at the ceiling for twenty minutes.

I held the mug and looked at my fingers.

They were warm.

I kept turning them over, waiting for the cold to come back.

"He didn't even say sorry on the hill," Kari said. "He said 'what did you do.' Like you'd broken his truck."

"He felt it," I said. "Everyone felt it."

"Good."

Someone pounded on the front door.

Kari was on her feet before I could speak.

"I'll tell him you're asleep," she said.

"Open it."

"Dessa."

"Open it, Kari. I want to hear what he's got."

She yanked the door wide and stood in the gap with her flour-dusted arms folded.

Lucan stood on the porch in the rain.

He still had no coat, and his shirt was stuck to his chest.

The porch light made his eyes look amber.

"Five minutes," I said from the kitchen table. "Then you go."

Kari let him in and stayed standing at his shoulder, close enough to hit him.

He didn't look at her.

He looked at me, and then at the mug in my hands.

"Your hands are warm," he said.

"Yes."

"They've never been warm on a moon night."

"I know that," I said. "I had them for two years."

He pulled a folded square of paper out of his back pocket.

It had gone soft at the edges from being opened too many times.

He set it on the table and slid it across to me.

"I got one of these every month," he said. "Seven of them. I kept every one."

I unfolded it.

The handwriting was round and slanted, with a long tail on the y.

Sorry, I'm not coming this month. Don't wait for me. D.

My stomach turned over.

It looked like my hand.

It looked so much like my hand that for one second I checked my own memory for it.

"I didn't write this," I said.

"It's your writing."

"It's close to my writing. I didn't write it."

"Then who did?"

"I don't know," I said. "You tell me. You got seven of them, and you read them seven times."

His jaw moved.

"You'd been tired for months. You barely spoke at dinner, you slept in the spare room twice, and I thought you'd decided you wanted out."

"You thought."

"What was I supposed to think?"

"You could have asked me."

He said nothing.

"In seven months you never asked me why I didn't come," I said. "You asked me about the patrol rota."

Kari made a small noise behind him.

Lucan's hands closed at his sides.

"You didn't say anything either," he said.

"I stood in a ring seven times in front of everyone you know."

I put the note down.

"That was me saying something."

The rain hammered the roof.

For a moment nobody breathed.

Then Lucan said, low, "A release has to carry the Alpha's seal to hold."

"It held on the hill."

"The moon took it. The pack law doesn't. I haven't signed anything, and I won't."

"I didn't ask you to."

"Dessa." His voice cracked on it. "I felt it go. I felt it leave my chest and I thought I was going to fall down on the slope in front of every wolf I command."

"I felt it too," I said.

"Then you know what you did."

"I know what you did, and I know it took seven months."

I stood up.

It was the wrong thing to do.

The moment I was on my feet the floor tilted, and a hot ache ran up my spine from the base to the neck.

My hands, the warm ones, went bright with pins and needles.

"Dessa?" Kari said.

"I'm fine."

I wasn't.

Every bone in my back slid a quarter inch out of place.

My jaw ached.

My teeth felt too big for my mouth.

"What's wrong with her?" Lucan said, and he took one step toward me.

"Don't touch me," I said.

"You're burning up. Your eyes."

"Don't."

Kari grabbed my elbow.

"Dessa, sit down. I'll get Ilse."

"No," I said, too sharply.

I didn't know why I'd said it.

I only knew I didn't want Ilse anywhere near whatever was happening to me.

The ache climbed into my skull.

The kitchen lights seemed to flare and then go soft, and I could smell everything.

I could smell the rain on Lucan's shirt, and the tea, and the flour in Kari's hair.

I could smell the whole forest through the walls.

"I have to go outside," I said.

"It's pouring," Lucan said.

"I have to go now."

I wrenched my elbow out of Kari's hand, pulled the back door open, and ran out into the dark.

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