Wolfless Luna's Royal Return novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Last Pot
At Vandeleur's moon gathering Garrick rejects Elspeth for Wynne; she drops her ring in the stew and walks out, and Garrick calls their son a dud.
I had been stirring the same pot since dawn when my husband told three hundred wolves he was done with me.
It was the autumn moon gathering at Vandeleur, and the Luna's job was to feed the whole pack.
So I fed them.
Venison stew, brown bread, roasted roots, and a pot of onion broth that sat on the fire since morning.
Every wolf in Vandeleur said my cooking kept them strong through winter.
Nobody had ever said it to my face as thanks.
My son Jory sat on my hip with his head on my shoulder, half asleep, sticky with honey.
He was five, and he smelled like bread.
On the Moon Stone, Garrick raised both hands, and the clearing went quiet.
He was the Alpha of Vandeleur, thirty-two, black-haired and broad, and he looked at me like I was a bill he'd forgotten to pay.
"Tonight the Moon showed me the truth," he said.
Wynne Gisborne stepped up beside him.
She was Vandeleur's beta, pale and smiling, and she laid her hand on his arm.
The mark on my left shoulder started to burn.
"Wynne is my fated mate," Garrick said. "Her wolf answered mine at sundown. I felt it in my bones."
A hum went through the pack, low and pleased.
They had known, or they had guessed, and none of them had bothered to tell me.
"Six years ago I chose Elspeth with my own mind, not the Moon's," Garrick went on. "She had no wolf, and I pitied her. I made her Luna out of kindness."
He turned his face to me.
"The kindness is over."
My throat closed.
Every wolf wakes fully at eighteen.
Mine never did, and the whole pack had spent nine years reminding me of it.
"I, Garrick Vandeleur, Alpha of Vandeleur Pack, reject Elspeth Chenoweth as my Luna and my mate."
The mark on my shoulder went white-hot, and my knees almost folded.
I locked them.
Three hundred faces looked at me, waiting to see me cry.
I handed Jory to the old woman next to me, who took him without a word.
Then I pulled the silver Luna ring off my finger.
It was warm from the fire and from six years of my hand.
I walked to the great pot, the one I had filled that morning to feed every wolf in the clearing, and I dropped the ring into the broth.
It sank with a small plop.
"Eat well," I said. "That's the last pot you'll ever get from me."
Someone gasped.
Wynne laughed once, short and bright.
"Dramatic," she said.
I didn't look at her.
I looked only at Garrick, with my back straight and my hands steady, and I said, "You'll want to count your wins this winter. I'd like to know how many you have left."
I had no idea why I said it.
Something under my ribs shifted, quick and hot, and went quiet again.
Garrick's face tightened for a heartbeat.
Then he sneered. "Take your pot, take your rags, and be gone by dark."
"Jory comes with me."
"The boy?"
He glanced at Jory, who had woken and was peering out from the old woman's skirts.
"Pups are pack property," Garrick said. "But I've been watching him. Five years old and not a spark, not a flicker."
He said it loudly, so the back rows could hear.
"He's wolfless like his mother. A dud. Keep him. I have no use for one."
The clearing laughed, a few of them first, then more.
Not one of them had ever gone hungry at my fire.
I walked back across the grass and took my son out of the old woman's arms.
His small hands gripped my collar.
He had heard every word.
He pressed his mouth to my ear and whispered, so only I could hear him.
"Mama, am I a dud?"
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