Exiled Mate, Future Luna novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Photograph

He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and took out a framed photograph.

He set it on the blotter and turned it to face me.

A young woman stood on a porch step in summer light, laughing at whoever held the camera.

She had dark auburn hair, a stubborn chin and grey eyes.

I knew the chin.

I had seen it in every mirror I had ever walked past.

"That's my sister," Rhys said. "She was twenty-four when this was taken. She was going to be the Luna of the Huddleston pack."

I couldn't look away.

"She looks like me."

"She looks exactly like you."

"Lots of people look alike."

"Does your mother ever talk about the night you were born?"

"She says it was the coldest night of the year," I said. "That I came a month early."

"You were born on the twenty-sixth of August," he said. "It was ninety-one degrees."

The office went very quiet.

I had told that story to a whole lecture hall four days ago.

I had told it as my own.

"Eighteen years ago, on that night, rogues came over the north ridge and hit the Huddleston house," he said. "My sister went into labor in the middle of it. She got the baby into the cellar with a midwife, and she went back up the stairs to fight."

His voice stayed level, and his hand on the desk did not.

"She didn't come back down. When we reached the cellar the midwife was dead and the cradle was empty."

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