The Luna He Threw Away Runs the Rival Pack Now

Chapter Three: A Bargain With the Beast

I woke in an enemy bed with my hand already over my stomach.

That was the first thing I checked, before my own safety, before anything. The small three-month swell was still there, still mine, still secret. Whatever had happened while I was under, no one had taken the one thing that was keeping me upright.

"It lives," said the gravel voice.

Dain Corwin sat across the room in a plain wooden chair, elbows on his knees, watching me the way you watch a snake you have not yet decided to kill. Grey dawn came through a narrow window. I had been out all night.

"The child," he said. "That's what your hand goes to first. Before you check for a blade, before you check the door. So it's real, and it's why you didn't fall for two hours you should have fallen in one." His head tilted. "Whose is it?"

"Mine," I said.

"That's not what I asked."

"It's the only answer you're getting." I sat up, slow, taking stock. Nothing hurt that shouldn't. No chains. A healer's instinct told me someone had put a warm compress on my neck where the bond had torn, and covered me, and left water within reach. Small mercies, in the Beast's own hall. "If you're asking whether it's Roderic's, and whether that gives you a hostage worth something, the answer is that the child is mine, it will always be mine, and the day you treat it as leverage is the day I stop being the most useful person in your pack and start being the most dangerous." I drank the water. "So don't. You want a hostage, Alpha, you'll find I make a very poor one. I have already lost my rank, my mate, my pack, and my home in a single night. A woman with nothing left to take is not a woman you can hold anything over." I met his eyes. "But I can be the most valuable ally you have ever had. Which of those I become is entirely your choice, and you have about six weeks to make it before the poison reaches your water."

Something moved behind his eyes. Not anger. Closer to respect, though I would not have staked my life on the difference yet.

"You threatened a Lycan King twice in one night," he said. "Once on my floor and once in my chair. No one does that. Certainly no one who weighs as little as you and bleeds as easy."

"I have nothing left to lose," I said. "You worked that out yourself last night. It makes me rude." I set the cup down. "Now. You didn't send my head to Roderic. You put a compress on my neck and water by the bed. So somewhere in the night you decided to use me instead of kill me. Which means you believe me about the poison. Which means we're already past the part where you pretend you might not." I met his eyes. "So let's not waste the morning. Ask me what you actually want to know."

He was quiet a moment.

Then Alpha Dain Corwin, the Nightriver Beast, the monster of every Ashfall bedtime story, leaned forward and asked the question that started everything.

"Ysolde," he said. "You named her on your own packhouse floor, in front of two hundred witnesses, when a smarter woman would have gone quietly. Why. What is she doing that's worth throwing your own last words at."

"She's not just poisoning Ashfall," I said. "She's culling it. The pups who sicken are the strong-blooded ones, the ones who'd grow into threats. The elders she's killed are the ones with long memories, the ones who might recognize her." I leaned in to match him. "Ysolde is not a jealous mistress who wanted my crown, Alpha. She came to Ashfall from somewhere none of us checked, eighteen months ago, and every month since, the pack has gotten weaker and she has gotten closer to the alpha's ear. She is hollowing Ashfall out from the inside. And when it's weak enough, someone is going to walk in and take it without a fight." I let the last piece fall. "The only question I have not answered yet is who she's hollowing it out for. Because a poisoner that patient is working for somebody. And your border is the closest one to Ashfall's east spring."

The Beast went very still.

"You think she's softening Ashfall," he said slowly, "as a gift. For me." There was something dangerous in how still he had gone, the stillness of a powerful man realizing he may have been maneuvered for months without ever once feeling the hand on his back.

"I think someone thinks that," I said. "I think there is a plan, and Ashfall is the first move in it, and you are either the buyer or the next target, and I do not yet know which. But I know how to find out. And I know poisons, and wards, and the inside of Ashfall's council better than any spy you could send." I stood up off the bed, and the room only swayed a little. "So here is my bargain, Alpha Dain Corwin. Give me your protection, and a place in your pack, and your word that my child is never used against me. And I will hand you the truth of what is coming, and the healer's hands to survive it, and, when the time is right, the throat of the pack that threw me away." I held out my hand, the way equals do, not the way a beggar does. "Do we have a deal?"

He looked at my outstretched hand.

He did not take it.

Instead he rose to his full height, which was considerable, and looked down at me with those pale grey eyes, and said something I did not expect at all.

"Before I take the hand of a woman who claims she cannot be surprised," he said, "there's something you should know that you clearly don't. Something about that child you keep your hand on." His voice dropped. "Because I can smell what it's going to be, little healer. And it is not an Ashfall wolf."