The Starborn Luna

Chapter four

The Bundle and the Beta

She was down the stairs before anyone came to get her.

The courtyard was cold and torchlit and smelled of horse sweat. Draven was already there, he must have been awake, or never slept, standing with two guards and the Ashfang beta, who was still holding the cloth bundle like it might do something if he set it down.

He saw her and straightened. Then he looked at the ground, which told her everything about the way he felt the last time they had been in the same room.

You rode all through the night, she said. Talk.

His name was Sael. She had always known him as quiet, reliable, the kind of beta who did his job and stayed out of politics. He looked like politics had found him anyway. There were dark rings under his eyes and mud on his boots up to the knee, he had ridden hard and not stopped and something about that, about the fact that he had chosen to come here without being ordered to, settled into her chest like a question she wasn't ready to ask yet.

Vorryn left Ashfang three hours after you did, he said. I didn't think anything of it at first. She told the gate she was visiting family. He turned the bundle over in his hands. Then I went to her quarters to return something she'd left in the council hall and the door was already open. Everything was cleared out. But she'd left this.

He held it out to Zyrael.

She didn't take it yet. Left it, or dropped it.

Left it. On the table. Like she wanted it found.

Zyrael looked at Draven. He was watching her, not the bundle, reading her reaction the way she read other people, which she noted.

She took the bundle. Unwrapped it.

Inside was a small disc of something that looked like dried resin, dark gold, about the size of her thumbnail. She felt its warmth even through the cloth. An exact shape of a six-pointed star was inside it.

She had never seen her mark from the outside. Not really, only in mirrors, at angles, always slightly distorted. But here it was. Sitting in her palm, pressed into foreign material, separated from her like a thing that could be owned.

Her first feeling was not fear. It was fury.

The room went quiet in the way rooms went quiet when something crossed from ordinary into something else.

That's not possible, Draven said. Low. Careful.

What is it, Zyrael said.

He looked at Sael first. Then back at her. Marks don't separate. They're not physical, they're not something you can extract. Whatever this is.

Whatever this is, Zorn said from behind her, he had appeared without her hearing him, which she filed away as something to think about later, someone spent a long time figuring out how to make it.

Sael shifted his weight. There's more.

They all looked at him.

Kaedryn's been asking questions. After you left, after the rejection, he found something in Vorryn's room too. Different from what you found here. Letters. Between Vorryn and someone outside the territory. He stopped. He wouldn't show me the letters. But he was different after. He's been different for two days. He sent me here to find you, not with a message, just, he said to find her and make sure she's alive and tell her.

He stopped again.

Tell me what, Zyrael said.

Sael met her eyes for the first time. He said: tell her the rejection wasn't mine.

Nobody spoke.

Zyrael kept her face entirely still. Five seconds. Ten.

He rejected me in front of two hundred wolves, she said. With his own voice. His own words.

I know.

Those words don't belong to someone else.

I know that too. Sael looked miserable. I'm just telling you what he said.

She wrapped the bundle back up. Held it at her side. Around her the courtyard was quiet, guards pretending not to listen, Draven pretending not to watch her face, Zorn not pretending anything.

He's coming, she said. Not a question.

Sael hesitated. He wanted to. I told him to wait.

Why.

Because you just got out. He said it simply. No drama in it. Whatever he has to say can wait until you're ready to hear it. If you ever are.

She looked at him for a moment. This quiet, reliable beta who had ridden through the night not on his Alpha's orders but on his own judgment. Who had stood in the same room where she was needled and said nothing, and had apparently not slept well since.

Thank you, she said. Go inside. Eat something.

He went.

She turned to Draven. What does it mean. Honestly.

He was quiet for a moment. When he spoke it was low, meant for her only. If someone has extracted even a fragment of the mark's energy and stabilised it, which should not be possible, then they can use it. As a key. As a locator. As a way to simulate your presence in rituals that require the Chosen.

Meaning.

Meaning someone could perform the awakening ceremony without you there. Or block yours from completing. Or. He stopped.

Or what.

Or use it to find out who you're connected to. The mark connects you to every bonded wolf in a territory when it activates. If someone has a piece of it, they could map those connections before you even know what they are.

She thought about the four heartbeats. About Vorrath riding through the dark toward her. About three letters burned into a page that someone had gone back to erase.

Draven.

Yes.

The letters in the burned book. VRN. It bothered me all night and I just placed it. She looked at him. It's not a name. It's an abbreviation. Old script. Vorryn uses the traditional shorthand. She paused. It's Vorrath. Those letters are the old-script short form of Vorrath.

At that moment everywhere was silent.

Draven's face changed at that instant. He looked so uncomfortable, the confidence had suddenly disappeared.

My brother, he said. Barely a sound.

I don't know, she said. I'm not saying it's him. I'm saying the letters match and someone burned them. She held his gaze. Who else knew you'd sent word to him tonight.

He did not answer.

The sound of hooves on the road. It was from a distance but was surely coming fast from the east.

Vorrath. Right on time.

She looked at the gate. Then at Draven, who was still standing very still with the look of a man recalculating everything he thought he knew.

When he rides in, she said quietly, don't tell him about the bundle.

He's my brother.

I know. She stared hard at him. Do not tell him.

The sound of the hooves got louder.

Draven looked at her. Then at the gate. Then back.

Alright, he said.

She was not sure anymore if it was trust or the start of something new. Either way, the gate was already opening and there was no more time to decide.