The Ugly Luna He Never Saw novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Mate Call
At the Autumn Moon, Niko crosses the hall by scent and stops at the kitchen hatch, where Tuuli hides in her hood, and the pack whispers that his mate is ugly.
The Alpha of Iron Lake was walking the hall, and every unmated wolf was holding her breath.
I wasn't one of them.
I was in the kitchen, behind the serving hatch, with a forty-cup coffee urn and my hood pulled down to my eyebrows.
That was where I always stood at the Autumn Moon.
Seven years ago three claws had opened my face from the corner of my right eye to my jaw.
That same night my hair had gone the colour of lead.
Since then the pack had a name for me, and it wasn't Tuuli.
It was the dishwasher.
"Poor thing," a she-wolf said at the long table, loud enough to carry. "She should be grateful they let her near the food."
Somebody laughed.
I kept my eyes on the urn and my hands steady.
Through the hatch I could see the whole hall, ninety wolves in their good clothes under the lanterns.
Niko Rautio walked between them, slow and huge, and they leaned away from him.
He was six foot five, with a shaved head and a thick dark beard, and he had been Alpha for three years.
He had never once walked the Mate Call.
Twice he had found a reason to be sick on the night.
This year the Council chair had stood up in front of everyone and said the Alpha would walk it or give up the seat.
So he walked.
He moved slowly, head a little down, and he did not look at the women he passed.
He looked at their hands, and sometimes their mouths.
Sanna Aho stood at the front in a white coat with a fur collar, her honey-brown hair blown into waves.
She had been told since she was twelve that she would be Luna.
She lifted her chin as he came near.
He walked past her.
A sound went around the hall.
He kept walking.
He passed the long table, and the she-wolf who had called me poor thing.
Then he turned his whole body toward the kitchen hatch.
I stopped breathing.
"Cedar," he said, to nobody. "Cold lake water."
His voice was deep and slow and dry, and it went straight down my spine.
He crossed the last ten feet and stood at the hatch, close enough that I could smell him.
Woodsmoke, wet wool and warm skin.
His eyes were the pale blue of lake ice, and they rested on my mouth.
"Tuuli Harju," he said.
I had never heard him say my name.
I hadn't known he knew it.
"Give me your hand."
It wasn't a request, and it wasn't cruel either.
It was the voice of a man who had already decided.
My hand came up all by itself, wet from the urn tap.
His closed around it.
Heat went through my arm and into my chest.
Something low under my breastbone started to hum.
When he turned my palm up, a thin silver crescent glowed in the middle of it.
An identical one glowed in his.
Nobody in the hall said a word.
Then, very softly, someone did.
"The dishwasher?"
"That's his mate? That?"
"Have you seen her face? Her actual face?"
"He's blind," another voice whispered. "He must be. Nobody who looked at her would."
Heat climbed my neck.
Niko did not move his head toward any of them.
He kept my hand in his, and his thumb began a slow circle over the crescent.
Orvo Aho, the Council chair, came forward with his white moustache and his sheepskin vest and a smile that stopped at his teeth.
"Congratulations, Alpha," he said. "But a Luna is chosen in the light. Let's have every lantern turned up, so the pack can see what you've picked."
Sanna's laugh was small and perfect.
A boy ran along the wall and cranked the lanterns to full.
Gold light fell across the hatch.
Orvo reached through the opening and flicked my hood back.
The pack saw my hair first.
Then they saw the scars.
I heard it in the silence.
My face burned.
I stood there, bare to the light, and looked at the man who had chosen me.
He looked back.
His expression did not change.
There was no flinch and no pity.
There wasn't even surprise, only a calm blankness.
Sanna's voice cut across the hall, sweet as syrup.
"Look at her, Niko. Really look. Tell us you see that."
His head turned toward the sound of her, slow.
"I know exactly where you're standing, Sanna," he said.
It was not an answer.
Nobody noticed that but me.
He came around the end of the hatch, took the coffee towel out of my other hand, and dropped it on the counter.
Then he tucked my hand into the crook of his elbow and walked me out through the middle of the hall.
Ninety wolves parted for us, and none of them looked away from my face.
I thought, he's being kind.
I thought, he'll see me in the daylight and take it back.
The cold hit us on the lodge porch, smelling of pine and lake.
He stopped at the top step and put one big hand on the side of my hood, where it hung down my back.
"Don't wear it," he said.
I stiffened.
"You can't tell me what to do with my face."
"I'm not asking about your face." His thumb brushed the edge of the fabric. "It muffles your voice."
He had just claimed me in front of ninety people.
Of everything he could have said next, that was the strangest.
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