The Black Luna

2

Joye's POV

I didn't sleep.

I sat on the thin mattress in the servants' quarters with my knees pulled to my chest, replaying that word over and over until it stopped sounding like something I'd said and started sounding like something that had been said through me.

Mate.

One syllable, and it had cracked the entire careful wall I'd built around myself in three days.

By morning, my hands had stopped shaking, but nothing else had settled.

"You look like death," said Rue, the only servant who'd bothered to learn my name instead of just calling me the black omega. She was maybe twenty, sharp-eyed, with a scar along her jaw she'd never explained. She dropped a basket of laundry beside my cot. "Rough night?"

"Something like that."

"Word is you were sent up to the Alpha's chambers." She said it carefully, watching my face for a reaction. "That true?"

"I was cleaning."

"Sure." She didn't push, but she didn't quite believe me either. "Careful with that one. He's not cruel for no reason, if that's worth anything. But he's not soft, either. Not since his father died."

I latched onto that — a thread of information, something real instead of rumor. "What happened to his father?"

Rue's face shuttered. "Not my story to tell. Ask him yourself, if you're brave enough." She hauled the basket back up. "Or don't. Wouldn't recommend it."

I spent the morning scrubbing the kitchens, half-listening to gossip that moved around me like I wasn't there.

That was its own kind of education — I learned that Jason had taken the Alpha position at twenty-two, younger than anyone expected, after his father was killed during a border dispute nobody liked to discuss in detail.

I learned that Bianca had arrived at Rivermoon two years ago from a neighboring territory, and that the betrothal had been arranged by the pack elders rather than fated — though nobody seemed to think that mattered, given how devoted Bianca acted whenever anyone was watching.

I learned, too, that no one in Rivermoon had ever seen a wolf like mine. Correction — a wolf like the one I didn't have. An old woman churning butter told a younger girl, without lowering her voice nearly enough, that Black wolves were a sign the Moon Goddess had turned her back on a bloodline. That whatever curse had followed my family had probably followed me here too.

I kept scrubbing. Kept my face empty. It was easier than arguing with people who'd already decided what I was before I opened my mouth.

By afternoon, my father found me.

He looked older than he had three days ago — grayer, smaller, like the weight of what he'd done had finally caught up with his spine. He waited until I was alone in the pantry, refilling flour sacks, before he spoke.

"Joye."

I didn't turn around. "I have work to do."

"I know you're angry."

"Angry isn't the word." I set down the sack harder than I needed to. "You sold me. Not a house, not livestock. Me."

"There was no other way." His voice cracked. "Your aunt's illness, the debt collectors, they were going to take the house, take everything—"

"So you gave them your daughter instead."

He flinched like I'd struck him. Good. I wanted him to flinch.

"I never wanted this for you," he said quietly. "I know that means nothing now. But I need you to know — whatever you think of me, I love you. I did this because I saw no other path."

I finally looked at him, and the anger in me cracked just slightly, enough to let something sadder through. "You should have told me. Before the contract. Before I found out standing in a hall full of strangers."

"Would you have agreed, if I'd asked?"

"No." The word came out flat. "Which is exactly why you didn't ask."

He didn't have an answer for that. He left without one, and I stood alone in the pantry for a long moment, letting the ache settle instead of fighting it.

That evening, I was sent to deliver linens to the east wing when Bianca found me in the hallway.

She was even more striking up close — blonde hair, flawless skin, the kind of beauty that made you understand instantly why a pack would want her as their Luna. She looked at me the way you'd look at something unpleasant you'd stepped in.

"You're the debt girl. Or should I say the girl who’s synonymous to darkness.” Not a question.

"Joye," I said. "My name is Joye."

"I know what you're called." Her voice was honey-smooth, the kind of pleasant that had teeth hidden underneath. "I also know you were sent to Jason's chambers last night."

My stomach dropped. "I was cleaning."

"Of course you were." She circled me slowly, the way a predator sizes up something it hasn't decided whether to bother with yet. "Let me offer you some advice, since you're new here and clearly don't understand how things work. Jason is mine. Has been for two years. Will be, the moment our betrothal is finalized next month. Whatever strange little accident brought you to Rivermoon, it doesn't change that."

"I never said it did."

"Good. Keep it that way." She stepped closer, and for one strange second, I caught something in her eyes that didn't look human at all — a flicker, gone as fast as it appeared, like a shadow passing behind glass. She inhaled once, slow, deliberate, like she was tasting the air around me instead of just breathing it.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

Her expression smoothed instantly back to polished calm. "Just getting a sense of you." She smiled, and it didn't reach her eyes at all. "You smell... interesting. For someone with no wolf."

Before I could ask what she meant, she'd already turned and walked away, heels clicking against stone, leaving me standing there with a chill crawling up my spine that had nothing to do with the draft in the hallway.

That night, unable to sleep again, I sat by the small window of my quarters and looked out over the dark grounds. The moon was climbing, nearly full, silvering the treetops at the edge of the territory.

And then I felt it — that same pull from the night before, fainter now but unmistakable, like a string drawing taut somewhere behind my ribs.

I leaned closer to the glass and saw him.

Jason, alone, standing at the edge of the training yard, facing the direction of the servants' quarters like something had stopped him mid-stride. He stood there a long moment, jaw tight, shoulders rigid, clearly fighting something.

Then, abruptly, he turned and walked back toward the pack house without looking back.

But I'd seen it. He'd stopped. He'd felt it too, whatever pulled us toward each other, and for one unguarded second, he hadn't been strong enough to ignore it.

I stayed at that window long after he disappeared, wondering how something that felt so undeniable to me could be so easy for him to walk away from — and wondering, too, what exactly Bianca had smelled on me that had made her look at me like I was a puzzle she intended to solve.