He Traded His Pregnant Luna to the Lycan King novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Highmoor

Wynne wakes in the King's hold with the baby safe, sets her terms to Ronan's face, and learns Torin has sent a rider offering Odette in a straight swap for her.

I woke in a stone room with a fire going and a heavy quilt up to my chin.

My knees were wrapped in clean linen, and the skin on my throat felt scraped raw.

My first thought was the baby.

My hand was on my stomach before I was properly awake.

"Heartbeat's strong," said a voice by the fire. "Quit poking at it."

A woman in a flour-dusted apron sat there with a bowl in her lap.

She was about sixty, with an iron-grey braid as thick as my wrist.

"Edda Moorcroft," she said. "I'm the healer here. You've slept eighteen hours, and you're going to eat all of this."

It was chicken broth with barley and so much pepper that my eyes watered.

I ate every spoonful.

Edda watched me with her arms crossed, and when the bowl was empty she nodded.

"The rejection tore your throat mark clean off," she said. "It'll scar. The pup's untouched. That's twice in my life I've seen a girl do that on her feet and keep her child."

"Who was the first?"

"Me." She took the bowl. "He's outside. He's been outside since noon, and he won't sit down."

"Who?"

Edda gave me a look.

"Your King."

"He isn't mine."

"Tell him that. I'm just the cook."

She went out, and the door opened again almost at once.

Ronan Greaves had to duck a little to come through it.

In daylight he was less frightening and harder to look at, with black hair going silver at the temples and dark eyes that did not leave my face.

He stopped at the foot of the bed.

"You should be lying down."

"I am lying down."

"You should stay that way."

"I want to talk about the terms," I said.

One of his eyebrows went up.

"The price was one woman of the Alpha's house, for a year and a day. By law, you're my ward for that long." I pushed myself upright against the headboard, and it hurt, and I did it anyway. "I'm not your payment, and nobody here calls me the price. Not you, not your guards."

"Agreed."

"You don't touch me unless I say so."

His jaw moved.

"That one I'll need to hear again."

"You don't touch me," I said, "unless I tell you to."

"Edda touches you."

"Edda's allowed."

"Fine. Edda's allowed."

"And you don't mark me. Not in a year and a day."

He was quiet for long enough that I thought he would refuse.

"I said I wasn't giving you back," he said at last. "I didn't say I would make you stay."

"You said I was the most expensive thing you ever bought."

"You were. A pregnant Luna who rejects her Alpha in front of two packs is a very expensive woman." Something dry moved at the corner of his mouth. "I didn't say I'd put you on a shelf."

"Then where does a ward go?"

"Wherever she likes in my house. Nobody lays a hand on her on my land." He paused. "That includes me. Until you say."

I had expected a fight.

It was a relief to have been wrong, and also a little annoying.

"I have one condition too," he said. "You eat what Edda puts in front of you."

"That's not a term."

"It's a condition. Mine." He looked at my middle, once, quickly. "Do you plan to tell him?"

"No."

"Wolves scent a pup at fourteen weeks. You're at eleven."

He said it flatly, the way you give someone a date.

"I only heard yours because Lycan ears are sharper than a wolf's nose. Three weeks, if he gets within a mile of you."

"Then he won't get within a mile of me."

"Wynne."

It was the first time he had used my name.

He'd said it quietly.

"He chose to give you away in front of forty witnesses," I said. "He doesn't get what's inside me too."

Ronan studied me for a moment, then gave one short nod, and I had the strange feeling I had passed something with him as well.

Then someone hammered on the door.

A big man in a King's guard coat put his head in without waiting. "Majesty. A rider from Stonewater, at the gate. He says it's urgent."

"Say it," said Ronan.

The guard looked at me, and then at the floor.

"Alpha Halloway sends word. He's willing to make a straight swap. Odette Brannigan for his Luna."

Nobody spoke.

"He says one woman for one woman is fair," the guard said, "and he'll have his Luna home by tomorrow."

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