The Alpha Who Let His Luna Die novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Half a Price

Kellan has a fruit of his own and a price: be his luna in public for a year.

I woke up in a bed that smelled of cedar and wool.

The room was small and warm, with a log wall and a window full of silver trees.

Someone had taken off my wet clothes and put me in a man's flannel shirt that came to my knees.

My hand flew to my belly.

"She's fine," a voice said. "Still kicking. I counted."

A woman sat in the chair by the bed with her boots on the mattress rail.

Short blonde hair, freckles across her nose, arms like a lumberjack's.

She held out a mug without being asked.

"Broth," she said. "I'm Hester Quinn, Kellan's beta. You've been out four hours, and you snored."

"I don't snore."

"You absolutely snore. It's a rattle, so I'm guessing the silver."

She said it flatly, as one more fact, and I found I liked her for it.

I drank the broth.

My hands still shook, but the room had stopped tilting.

The door opened, and Kellan Harrington ducked in under the lintel.

He carried a small wooden box in one hand.

He didn't sit.

He stood at the foot of the bed with his arms folded, a big, quiet man with a scar, and looked at me for a while.

"Your healer is wrong," he said.

"About what?"

"It isn't just silver sickness. Somebody has been feeding it to you."

I stared at him.

"Silver in food or drink builds up slowly," Kellan said. "Weeks. Months. I smelled it on you at the creek, so thick I could taste it."

I thought of the tea.

Every night for four months, somebody had brought me tea.

I thought of who brought it, and my stomach rolled over.

"I don't want to think about that right now," I said.

"Fine." He opened the box.

Inside, on a bed of moss, lay a pale round fruit the size of a plum.

It looked exactly like the one I had watched Rhea eat.

It glowed a little less.

"This one has been ripe a month," Kellan said. "My mother grew it. She said it was the last this tree would ever give."

"Why have you kept it?"

"My mother split the first one for my brother and me when we were children. It saved us both. She said it was meant to be shared, and I never found anyone worth giving it to."

He looked at me.

"Until a woman crawled out of my creek."

Something in my throat closed up.

"What do you want for it?"

Hester snorted into her tea.

Kellan's mouth moved, not quite a smile.

"You're quick. Good. I do want something."

He walked to the window.

"My elders have been after me for two years to take a mate. Half of them want me bonded to a southern pack for an alliance, half want a war. The fastest way to shut them both up is for me to stand in front of Ashfall with a luna."

"You want me to pretend."

"For one year. You stand beside me in public. You sit at my Council seat, and you wear my pack's mark where they can see it."

"No bed?"

I said it before I could stop myself.

Hester choked on her tea again.

Kellan turned around slowly.

He looked at me with those storm-gray eyes and said, very evenly, "Nothing happens in that bed unless you ask for it."

Heat went up my neck, and I hated that my body noticed.

Even half-dead and rejected and five minutes out of a river, it noticed him.

"After the year," he said, "you walk away free. The fruit, the pack's protection for you and the pup, and a new name if you want one. I won't hold you to anything past twelve months."

I looked at the fruit.

I thought about my mate standing under the tree with his hand out.

I thought about the sound the skin made when Rhea bit it.

"Twelve months," I said. "And you never touch my daughter's name. She's mine."

"She's yours."

"Then yes."

He crossed the room and put the box in my lap.

His fingers brushed mine, and the touch ran straight up my arm.

My wolf, curled in the corner of me since the rejection, lifted her head.

Kellan stepped back.

Hester raised both eyebrows at the ceiling.

I picked up the fruit.

It was warm, and the skin gave under my thumb.

"It'll hurt," Kellan said quietly. "Silver burns out of the blood. It takes a minute."

"I've had worse tonight."

I bit down.

Sweetness flooded my mouth, honey and snow, and for one clean second I felt nothing at all.

Then the whole world turned white.

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