From Hybrid Outcast To Luna novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Silver in the Cup
At the Redmoor marking feast, Morwenna smells silver in the tonic her best friend hands her, hears her mate order it done, and pours it out in front of two hundred wolves before running for her life.
Garrick tapped his knife against his glass, and the whole feast hall went quiet.
Two hundred wolves turned to look at me.
I sat beside him at the head table, one hand on my belly.
I was four months along, and tonight he was finally going to mark me.
"Six years ago the Goddess gave me a mate," Garrick said. "Tonight I stop making her wait."
People clapped.
The Elder Mother at the next table didn't, and nobody expected her to.
The pack had a name for me, and it wasn't Luna.
They called me the half-breed, because my mother is a wolf and my father is a vampire.
I touched the leather cuff on my right wrist, the way I did when I was nervous.
Dad had made me wear it since the day I was born.
Under it was a small black crescent I had never been allowed to show anyone.
The silver crescent on my left wrist was the one that mattered tonight.
That one was Garrick's.
He squeezed my hand and smiled at the hall.
"Morwen."
Verity Dane had come up behind my chair with a glass in her hand.
She was the pack healer, and the only person in Redmoor who had ever sat with me when I cried.
She had held my hair back every morning of the first three months.
"Last tonic of the night," she said, and squeezed my shoulder. "Drink it down, and then he marks you, and not one elder can say a word."
"You're a lifesaver," I told her.
"You're shaking."
"I'm nervous."
"Of course you are. I'll be right behind you the whole time."
She set the glass in my hand.
It was the same tonic she had brought me every night since I found out about the baby.
Mint, honey, something green.
I lifted it to my mouth.
Under the mint and the honey there was a sharp metal smell.
My vampire half has a better nose than anyone in this pack knows.
Dad made me promise to keep that quiet, so I always had.
I held the glass under my chin and didn't drink.
The applause was still going.
Behind my chair, Garrick leaned back and spoke to Verity in the low voice he thought only she could hear.
"Is it all in?"
"Every drop," Verity said. "The baby first, then her."
"Then keep smiling."
I heard every word.
Verity had cried at my first scan.
She had told me the heartbeat was the most beautiful thing she'd ever heard.
I sat there with the glass in my hand and every wolf in the Redmoor hall watching me.
I asked myself what I was supposed to do.
The answer came fast.
I stood up.
"Morwenna?" Garrick said. "Sit down. You're tired."
"I'm fine."
I tipped half the glass onto the floorboards at the foot of the head table.
The liquid hissed.
Black smoke curled up from the wood, and a ring of scorched grey spread outward from the spot.
The wolves nearest the table pushed their chairs back.
A man at the front shifted his head and snarled, and a woman covered her nose.
"Silver," someone whispered.
The whisper ran down the hall.
Verity's face went white.
"That's just the herbs," she said quickly. "Morwen, sweetheart, you're confused."
"Then drink what's left."
I held out the glass.
She didn't take it.
I turned to Garrick.
"You drink it, then. You're the one who said it was all in."
His eyes went to the glass and stayed there.
Nobody in the hall said a word.
The Elder Mother stood up.
"The half-breed has vampire tricks," she said. "She carries silver in her own blood and spills it for show. Alpha, take your mate to her room."
"No," I said.
Garrick's jaw tightened.
"Beta," he said. "Take her."
The Beta started around the table.
I didn't wait to hear what came next.
I had the glass in my fist, with the last mouthful still in it, and I ran for the side door.
Chairs crashed behind me.
I hit the porch and went down the steps and into the trees.
Four months pregnant, in a feast dress, barefoot in the leaves.
Staying meant dying, so I ran.
Garrick's voice came into my head down the pack link, the one I had shared with him for six years.
Bring her down. Alive if you can. The pup is no loss.
My lungs burned.
Branches whipped across my arms.
Behind me I could hear them shifting, a dozen wolves, then twenty, fanning out through the pines.
The river was a mile ahead, and past the river was land no Redmoor wolf was allowed to cross.
I wasn't going to make it.
I was almost at the water when a voice spoke inside my head that wasn't a wolf's.
It was calm, and it was my father's.
Stop running, Morwen. I've had you since the cup. Look to your left.
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