The Alpha's Regret Came Too Late for His Dead Luna

Chapter Seven: A Traitor's Map

Kael's people did not question me. That was the first thing I noticed about the Bloodmoon, hidden in a hunting lodge two valleys deep in enemy territory. Their King brought a bleeding Ironmoon Luna out of the snow at dawn and gave one order, guard her, and not a single wolf in that pack argued or muttered or so much as raised a brow. Torvald could not get his own beta to fetch firewood without a threat and a reminder of rank. Kael Draven governed a pack of so-called monsters with a look and a word.

I slept four hours in a narrow bed that smelled of cedar. I woke with a plan already assembled, the way I woke with everything now, my dead self and my living one working together in the dark.

"You want proof I am worth the risk of hiding," I said, when Kael came to the lodge at noon, ducking his head under the low door. "So take proof. In six days a Bloodmoon patrol on your eastern ridge is going to be ambushed at the old cairn by Ironmoon scouts wearing no colors. Torvald is testing you. He wants to see how you respond to a nameless attack, so he can lay the groundwork to call you the aggressor later, when he needs the story. Send no one to the cairn on the sixth day. And when his ambush finds nobody there to kill, you will have your proof, and he will have wasted a move and learned nothing."

Kael's gold eyes did not leave my face. "And if you are wrong?"

"Then you have lost nothing but a patrol you would have sent anyway." I held his gaze without flinching. "But I will not be wrong. I buried two of the wolves who died at that cairn the first time, Alpha. I washed them and wrapped them and said the moon-words over them myself. I remember their names. Do you want them?"

I gave him the names. He wrote nothing down. He simply held them in that still, absolute way of his, the way he held everything, and left without another word.

On the sixth day, no Bloodmoon wolf went to the cairn.

On the seventh, Kael came back to the lodge, and for the first time there was something in his face beyond guarded calculation. The Ironmoon scouts had come to the cairn in the dark, he told me, in no colors, twelve of them, armed and ready for a slaughter, and had found the ridge empty and cold, and had stood there in the snow not understanding, and had gone home with nothing on their blades and a question they could not answer. Exactly, to the day and the place and the number, as the dead woman said they would.

"You knew," he said. It was almost an accusation. "To the day. To the place. To the twelve of them."

"I told you what I am." I sat up on the narrow bed. "Now do you believe your bond?"

He crossed the lodge and crouched down in front of me, so that we were eye to eye, King and dead Luna, and this close the pull was a physical ache low in my chest, and I saw that it cost him as much as it cost me to hold still against it, saw the muscle in his jaw work.

"I believe," Kael said, low and rough, "that a woman came out of my snow who should be dead. Wearing a bond I have felt for three years and never once been able to find. Carrying a map of my enemy's treachery in her head, down to the names of the dead." His jaw tightened further. "I have spent my whole life being the monster the packs invented to frighten their pups into their beds. And the one wolf fate ever made for me turns out to be the Luna of the pack that hates me most, sent to me broken and bleeding by the very man I am supposed to have killed." He almost smiled, and it was not a happy thing. "Fate has a cruel sense of humor, little wolf."

"Fate can wait its turn," I said. "Revenge first. The bond second. That was the offer, and I will hold to it."

"That was the offer." He stood, unfolding to his full height. "Then here is the first thing your King requires of you, since we are allies now, you and I. Torvald believes his Luna vanished into the snow on her wedding night. His witch knows she was in my woods. Which means, Renna, you cannot simply walk back into Ironmoon and pick up your marriage where you dropped it." His gold eyes held mine. "So the question is this. Do we let Ironmoon believe their Luna is dead in the snow, and turn you into a ghost that haunts them from the inside? Or do we send you home with a lie good enough to survive a witch's questioning?"

Before I could answer, a Bloodmoon scout put her head through the lodge door, breathless, snow in her hair.

"My King. An Ironmoon envoy at the border, under a truce banner. It is Alpha Torvald himself, come in person." She swallowed. "And he is demanding the return of his stolen bride."

Kael and I looked at one another across the low lodge, and I saw the same understanding move through us both at once. The war had not waited three years after all. Sable had reached for it the very first night, with both hands, and now my husband stood at the enemy's gate playing the wronged groom, and whatever I did in the next hour would decide whether a whole continent went to fire over a lie about a lost bride.

Kael and I looked at one another across the low lodge, and I saw the same understanding move through us both at once. The war had not waited for three years after all. Sable had reached for it the very first night, with both hands, and now my husband stood at the enemy's gate playing the wronged groom, and whatever I did in the next hour would decide whether a whole continent went to fire over a lie about a lost bride. I stood up from the narrow bed.

"Then I had better go and be found," I said.