The Black Luna

Joye's POV "You'll serve the Alpha's private chambers starting tonight." The head servant said it like she was handing me a chore list, not rearranging the rest of my life. I stood in the narrow hallway outside the kitchens, still holding a stack of folded linens, and tried to keep my face blank. "His chambers," I repeated. "Not the main house?" "Those were his instructions." She didn't look up from her clipboard. "Something about keeping you out of sight until he decides what to do with you." Out of sight. Right. Because apparently even my existence was an inconvenience someone needed to manage. I'd been at Rivermoon three days. Three days of scrubbing floors that hadn't been dirty before I touched them, three days of pack members going quiet when I walked past like my presence might be contagious, three days of hearing my own name — Joye — turned into something closer to a slur every time someone said it just loud enough for me to hear. The debt girl. The black-skinned slave. The one with no wolf at all. I'd stopped expecting kindness. I hadn't stopped hoping for it, which was somehow worse. The servant shoved a fresh set of linens into my arms and pointed me toward the east tower. "Third floor. Last door. Don't touch anything on his desk, don't speak unless spoken to, and for goddess's sake, don't be there when he wants to sleep." I climbed the tower stairs slowly, linens pressed to my chest like a shield. Every step brought me closer to a door I didn't want to walk through, and every step, my pulse ticked up a little more, for reasons I couldn't fully explain. I told myself it was nerves. Just nerves. The door at the top was heavy oak, carved with the Rivermoon crest — a wolf howling at a crescent moon. I knocked once, got no answer, and let myself in the way I'd been instructed to. The room was empty. I exhaled for what felt like the first time in an hour and got to work fast, hoping to finish before he ever came back. I stripped the bed, laid fresh linens, straightened the books scattered across a low table near the window. The room smelled like him already — cedar and something colder underneath, like the air right before a storm. I hated that I noticed. I hated more that some traitorous part of me liked it. I was refolding a blanket at the foot of the bed when the door opened behind me. I froze. "I told them not to send anyone up tonight." Jason's voice was low, tired in a way I hadn't heard from him before — not the cold, commanding voice from the hall three days ago. "I can come back," I said quickly, not turning around. "Don't bother. You're already here." I heard him cross the room, the clink of him setting something down — a glass, maybe — and I kept my eyes on the blanket in my hands, willing myself to move faster, finish, leave. "Look at me." I turned, reluctant, and immediately regretted it. He'd taken off his jacket. His sleeves were pushed up his forearms, and there was something unguarded in his face that hadn't been there in the great hall — exhaustion, maybe, or the absence of an audience to perform for. "You've been avoiding my eyes since you got here," he said. "I was told not to speak unless spoken to." "I'm speaking to you now." I made myself meet his gaze, and the room tilted the way it had three days ago — that same pull, that same impossible awareness of him that made no sense for someone I'd exchanged maybe ten words with in my entire life. "Why am I really here?" I asked, before I could stop myself. "In your chambers. Not the servants' hall." Something flickered across his face. "Convenience." "That's not an answer." "It's the only one you're getting." I should have let it go. Every instinct told me to fold the blanket, set it down, and leave before I said something that would get me thrown in a dungeon. But three days of swallowed anger had worn something loose in me, and it came out before I could stop it. "You could have just left me in the hall to be humiliated by strangers instead of humiliating me privately instead. Very efficient." His jaw tightened. For a second I thought he might snap at me, order me out, remind me exactly what I was worth in coins. Instead, he stepped closer, close enough that I had to tip my head back to keep looking at him. "You think I wanted any of this?" His voice had dropped, rough at the edges. "You think I planned to feel—" He stopped himself. Too late. "Feel what?" I whispered. He didn't answer. He didn't need to. I could feel it too — that thread pulling taut between us, humming louder the closer he stood, until it wasn't something I could pretend was just nerves anymore. "This is insane," I breathed, mostly to myself. "You hate me. You've hated me since the second you saw me." "I don't hate you." The words came out low, almost startled, like he hadn't meant to say them either. The pull surged, sudden and overwhelming, and the word rose up out of me before I had any control over it at all. "Mate." The room went utterly silent. Jason went rigid. His eyes — usually so carefully guarded — flared gold for half a second before he shut it down, jaw locking tight. "What did you just say?" My hands had started shaking. "I didn't mean to—" "Say it again." "I can't take it back," I said, panic climbing my throat. "I don't even know why I said it, I just—" "Say it again.” "You're my mate." The words cracked out of me, raw and unstoppable now that the dam had broken. "I don't know how, I don't have a wolf, I shouldn't even be able to feel this, but I do, and I know you feel it too, I saw your hand three days ago, I saw —" "Enough." The command in his voice cut through the room like a blade. He stepped back from me so fast it was almost violent, putting distance between us like I'd burned him. "You're mistaken," he said, but his voice shook on the last word, betraying him completely. "I'm not." "You have to be." He turned away, raking a hand through his hair, and when he spoke again his voice had gone hard, controlled, the Alpha voice from the great hall. "Because I am promised to Bianca. Because there is no version of this that ends with you being right." I stood there, linens forgotten at my feet, watching the back of the man who'd just told me — without saying it outright — that he felt exactly what I felt, and hated himself for it. "Get out," he said quietly. I left without another word. But halfway down the tower stairs, my legs finally gave out, and I sat there in the dark, one hand pressed to my chest, feeling something ancient and impossible finally waking up inside me for the very first time.