The Discarded Luna

King at the table

Close, from the deep shadow of the wall not four feet to my left where absolutely no one had been standing a moment ago, a man's voice, low and unhurried and edged with something like amusement.

"So," he said. "This is the Luna they buried alive.

I turned so fast I nearly went over the bench.

He came out of the shadow of the wall like the dark had decided to give him back , a big man, taller than Kade, in a black coat that hadn't a speck of road dust on it despite the convoy still grinding up the mountain behind him. Silver at his cuffs. A face carved for hard weather. And eyes so pale they caught the lantern light and threw it back like a wolf's on a highway.

I knew him. Everyone knew him. There were three paintings of him in the war archive and none of them had gotten it right.

Rhydian Vale. Alpha King of the Northern pack. The Butcher of Kellsmoor. The man who had taken three packs in a single winter and left the fourth standing only because it knelt fast enough.

"You're not supposed to be inside the wards," I said.

"No," he agreed.

"How long have you been standing there?"

"Long enough to hear a man give away his Luna's stone and call it charity." He tilted his head. Something in the movement was very animal. "You clapped."

Heat went up my throat. "Get off my land."

"Your land." He said it softly, like he was tasting it. "Interesting."

The garden gate banged. Warriors poured out, Dorian at the front with his gun already up, and behind them Kade, coat flying, wolf boiling in his eyes.

Rhydian didn't so much as glance at them. He was still looking at me, at the mating mark on the left side of my throat, uncovered because I'd wanted Kade to see it tonight.

"Elara," Kade snapped. "Get behind me."

I did. Three years of training will do that.

And Rhydian Vale smiled like he'd just learned something worth the drive.

You cannot kill a Alpha in your own garden without starting a war, so instead you feed him.

The feast was reassembled in forty minutes. The pups were sent to bed. The silver lanterns that had been hung for my blessing burned over a table full of Northern soldiers eating our venison in their coats, and I stood against the wall by the kitchen door where I always stood, and nobody asked me to sit.

"The Kellsmoor Accord expires in eleven days," Rhydian said, somewhere around the second course. He wasn't eating. He was turning a wine glass by the stem, unhurried, while Kade's jaw worked. "You've refused four envoys. I began to worry you'd forgotten how to write."

"I've been burying men," Kade said.

"So have I. I bury them faster." Rhydian set the glass down. "Your father took nine miles of the Ridge while I was in exile. I want it discussed. Tonight I only want dinner, a bed, and the courtesies."

Elder Vashti made a small sound. “The courtesies”. Old law, older than any of us: a visiting Alpha is greeted by the Luna of the house, hand to hand, at the head table. It's not politeness. It's a binding. It says you are safe under this roof, and so are we.

Kade went very still.

I watched him do it. I watched my mate weigh the moonstone he'd hung around his brother's widow's throat two hours ago in front of two hundred witnesses, and I watched him choose.

"Seraphine," he said.

Sera rose in her grey silk, the stone flashing at her collarbone, and glided to the head of the table with her hands out and her eyes wet and lovely. "Alpha King. Blackthorn welcomes you."

The hall didn't breathe.

Rhydian did not look at her. Not once. He kept his pale eyes on the wall by the kitchen door on me and asked, perfectly pleasantly:

"Why does that woman wear the Alpha's mark on her neck, and this one wear the Luna's stone on her throat?"

Forks stopped. Somewhere a chair leg scraped.

Kade's hand closed on the table edge hard enough to whiten the wood.

And I, gods help me, I did what I had done for three years, the way you put your body between your mate and a blade before your brain catches up.

"Because the stone is heavy, my King," I said, "and I've been ill."

My voice carried. It always did in that hall; I'd sung in it at every Solstice since I was nineteen.

"The Luna's stone belongs to whoever the pack needs it on tonight," I went on. "Tonight they need it on the woman raising Rowan Ashborne's son. Tomorrow they may need something else. I'm not so small that I can't lend a rock."

A ripple of laughter, relieved and grateful, went down the table. Vashti pressed a hand to her heart. Dorian shut his eyes.

Kade exhaled.

And Rhydian Vale looked at me the way a man looks at a fire someone has been very carefully sitting on.

"Ah," he said quietly. "You're the one holding it together."

"I'm the one who fetches the wine, my King."

"Fetch it, then." He turned back to Kade, and the temperature of the room dropped ten degrees. "Nine miles of the Ridge. Tomorrow. Bring maps and bring your Beta, since your Luna appears to be a shared position."

Later, when the hall had emptied and the Northerners had taken the east wing and the house had gone quiet in that ringing way houses do after disasters, Sera found me stripping my mother's quilt off the Luna's bed.

She stood in the doorway with a cup in her hands, steam curling.

"You forgot your tea."

"I'm not thirsty."

"Elara." She came in anyway, set it on the nightstand that was no longer mine, and touched my arm with that soft, sad little hand. "Don't be angry at him. He's drowning."

I folded the quilt. It took a long time because my hands weren't steady.

"You should thank me, you know," Sera said gently. "I'm the only reason he hasn't left you."

I looked up.

She was smiling. Just faintly. Just at the corners. And her eyes weren't sad at all.

"There now," she said, patting my arm. "Drink it while it's hot. You look so tired."

She left. I stood there holding my mother's quilt with my heart slamming and my mark cold as a stone in a river.

Then I picked up the cup and carried it out into the hall, because I couldn't stand to be in that room another second.

The corridor to the guest wing was long and lit by one lamp at the far end, and he was leaning against the wall halfway down it like he'd been waiting an hour and could wait three more.

I stopped. "Do you ever use doors?"

"Rarely." Rhydian pushed off the wall. He moved quietly for a man that size, which I decided I hated. "That was a very expensive lie you told for him tonight."

"It wasn't a lie."

"It was a beautiful lie. He didn't even thank you." He came closer, and I made myself hold still. "Do you know what you smell like, Luna?"

"Kitchen smoke."

"Moonlight under a lid." He stopped a foot away. Close enough that I had to look up. Close enough that I could feel the heat of him through the cold air, and something under my breastbone, that empty room, that shut door shifted.

Then his gaze dropped to the cup in my hands, and everything easy went out of his face.

He took it. Lifted it. Breathed once over the rim.

"Wolfsbane and grey hemlock," he said flatly. "Cut with mint so you'd drink it. Whoever's mixing this knows exactly how much a body can take without dying." His eyes came up and there was nothing amused in them anymore. "Somebody has been poisoning your wolf. Do you want to know how long?"

The floor felt very far away.

"That's not…." My mouth was dry. "That's a strengthening tonic. Our healer makes it. I've had it every night since."

"Since when?"

"Since my mating night," I whispered.

Something moved through him then, enormous and quiet, like a mountain deciding.

"Three years," Rhydian said. "Elara. Listen to me carefully, because we have about eleven seconds. That is not a sick woman's tonic. That is a muzzle. Someone in this house is terrified of what you'd

be if you woke up."

Bootsteps on the stair. Fast. Two at a time.

And Kade's voice, low and murderous, coming up out of the dark:

"Elara?”