The Enemy Alpha's Ashen Luna

Garrow reached the healing house on his hands and knees. Wren was at the door with her basket, already late for her own Luna ceremony, when she heard his nails scrape the stone. She dropped beside him. Grey veins crawled up his neck like cracks in ice. Silverblight, and far gone. "Easy, Garrow. Let me get you inside." "No time." His fingers locked around her wrist, right over the silver line that bound her to Corin. "Aldric's girl. You have your mother's eyes." "You are burning up. Stay still." "Listen to me." Blood bubbled on his lips. "They lied about the Thread, Wren. It was never real." He coughed until his whole body shook. Something small and cold hit her palm. A silver key, old, with a crescent moon cut into its bow. "Calloway vault," he whispered. "Under the moon. And do not trust anyone who smiles at you tonight." His grip loosened. Her father's oldest guard was gone. Wren knelt there with the key burning in her fist. The ceremony horn sounded across Stonehollow, the second call. She shoved the key deep into her herb pouch, laid her cloak over Garrow's face and told the first guard she found to fetch the death cart. Then she ran for the archives. The vault registers were kept there. If the crescent meant anything, the answer sat on a shelf, and she had ten minutes before the whole pack came looking for their Luna. The archive door stood open a hand's width. Voices came through it. "One more week," Corin said. Wren stopped so fast her slippers skidded. That was her mate's voice, the one that had said goodnight to her for six years. "One week, and the Council names me Alpha. I stand beside my father, I wear the crown, and then she is no use to anyone." "You say that now." Brielle. Wren's best friend, who had braided her hair an hour ago and cried into the ribbons. "Tonight you kiss her in front of everyone. You promise her your life. And I stand there and clap." "It is a promise to a wall, Bri. It costs me nothing." Then came a soft sound that Wren did not need light to understand. Her hand flew to her mouth. It did not matter. A bigger hand closed over it from behind and dragged her backward into the dark. "Do not scream, Luna." She drove her elbow into a stomach like stone, and her herb knife slid out of her sleeve. He caught her wrist without effort and turned her around. They stood on the narrow ledge outside the archive wing, a hundred feet of cliff at their backs. Black hair. A scar through one eyebrow. Eyes so dark they looked silver where the torchlight touched them. She knew him. Everyone in the valley knew him. "Lucan Ravenscar," she said. "The Butcher of Greywater Ford." "That is what your regent calls me." He released her and stepped back, hands open. He did not look sorry. "I came tonight to cut Corin Thorne's throat. Then I heard what he said, and decided he could wait." "You are in Stonehollow. If I scream, forty wolves will take your head." "Then scream." He held out a smooth river stone. "Or look first." She should have screamed. She took the stone instead. It was warm, and the moment her skin touched it, a memory opened inside her head like a window. Corin, two winters younger, at the Thornwood crossing. A map in his hand. A man with a silver ring counting coins into his palm. Corin's finger on the paper. "Ravenmark's northern patrol. They change at midnight." She dropped the stone. Lucan caught it before it hit the ground. "A Ravenmark seer presses memories into river stone," he said. "My scout died holding this one. The night it happened, my brother Soren was taken from that patrol line. I have not seen him since." "Corin would never." "You just heard him. Do you want to hear him again?" Her throat closed. "Why tell me?" "Because you are the only person in that building who did not know." He paused. "And because I owe your father something I should have delivered seven years ago." Her heart stopped. "You killed my father." "I found him. A silver arrow in his chest, at Greywater Ford. He had asked to meet me there and never said why." Lucan's voice stayed flat, but a muscle moved in his jaw. "He had one message for you. Tell my daughter to look under the moon. Then he died. Stonehollow wolves came, saw me standing over him, and I have been the Butcher ever since." Garrow's last words rang in her head. Under the moon. The key pressed against her hip through the leather. She said nothing. Lucan watched her face, then looked at her wrist and went still, as if he had seen something there that did not belong. It lasted one breath. "Tell me something," he said. "When Corin called you no use to anyone, did your Thread burn?" "A Thread does not." She stopped. "A living Thread burns when your mate lies. Every wolf knows that." She looked down. The silver line on her wrist lay smooth and cold as an old scar. It had not burned tonight. It had not burned in six years, not when Corin lied about where he spent his evenings, not when he swore she was the love of his life. "Do not accuse him," Lucan said quietly. "He has a father, a pack and your trust. You have no wolf. If you speak tonight, you will be dead before sunrise." The horn sounded a third time. Below them, the whole pack began to sing. "Go," he said. "Say your vows. And while your mate lies to you in front of everyone you know, feel your wrist." She went. At the arched door she looked back. The ledge was empty. Wren smoothed her gown, wiped her face and walked into the hall to be crowned beside a man she no longer knew.