The Luna Reborn

Rafe

Rafe pov

I do not take orders.

Ask anyone in the North. Ask the three Alphas I broke last winter. Ask my own council. Rafe Dumont does not bow, and Rafe Dumont does not obey.

So why had I done seven things Ember asked in the last four days?

Number one: I gave her my cloak. Number two: I fetched her stew. Number three: a bath. Number four: a blanket. Number five: I gave her Sable, my best mare. Number six: I told Miss Pearl no onions, because she had mentioned once that she hated them. Number seven: I moved the war council to the afternoon because she thought morning was “too early to talk about killing people.”

Four nights in a row, I had lain awake in my bed with a wall between us, listening to her breathe. I told myself it was strategy. A man should know what he is buying. Storm told me I was lying.

“That’s eight,” Jonah said.

“There is no eight.”

“You let her sit in your chair at supper.”

“It was warm.”

“You don’t let people sit in your chair. People die trying.”

“Jonah.”

“I’m just saying. You’ve gone soft.”

“I am not soft.”

“You’re soft.” He grinned. “It’s the contract. You always keep a contract.”

“It’s a deal.”

“Same thing.”

At the war council yesterday, I hadn’t heard a single word. Old Ferris, my war chief, asked if I agreed with raising the northern wall. I said, “Ember thinks morning is too early to talk about killing people.”

The room went silent.

“I mean yes,” I added.

Nobody looked at me for the rest of the meeting.

I wanted to throw something at him. He was right, and I hated it.

That was the problem. I wasn’t doing these things because she asked. I was doing them because I wanted to. Which was so much worse

Mate, Storm murmured in the back of my skull.

Don’t.

I’m only watching.

Then stop watching.

My wolf didn’t answer. He just sat there, quiet and stubborn, staring at the door she walked through. Like a dog stares at a fire.

I had slept with more women than I could count. Dancers. Widows. Warrior daughters. They all got the same speech. One night. No promises. They all left by sunrise, relieved or sulking. None of them stayed in my head.

Ember had been in my head since the moment she lifted her chin on that stage and looked at me like I was the one who should be afraid.

I knew what a mate bond did. I had watched my father crumble after my mother’s death. I had sworn I would never let anything have that kind of power over me. No strings. No bond. Just nights.

And what would she ask for, at the end? Gold? Land? A pack of her own? Women had asked me for all of it. I had always said yes, and I had always walked away. This time, I wasn’t sure I could.

The problem was that I hadn’t slept in three of them. Not since the lodge.

“I have news,” Jonah said. His grin was gone.

He dropped a roll of notes on my desk. “I sent a rider to Pinewood. Tessa Cole is who Vera’s ledger says. Twenty-two. Born human, no wolf in the family. Her father died six years ago. Her mother’s name is Lena Cole. Healer’s assistant. Low-born.”

“Low-born.” The word tasted bitter.

“The woman who signed Tessa over wasn’t her mother,” Jonah went on. “She’s the stepmother. Greta Voss. She married the father after Lena was put out of the house. Greta sold Tessa to Vera’s club for forty gold crowns.”

“And Lena?”

“Missing for three weeks.” Jonah’s voice lowered. “Folks in Pinewood whisper that Greta keeps her locked in a cellar. They say she screams at night.”

Cold slid down my spine.

I thought about a woman in a cellar. Chains. Darkness. I thought about the way Ember went white every time I asked about the wolf, and wondered whose cry she had heard that I hadn’t. Because I knew one thing for certain. That girl had not come to my bed for money.

Then I thought of Ember’s face at the window, two nights ago, white as a sheet when I asked about the wolf. Who put a wolf inside a girl who never had one? She had lied. She had lied well. But her hands had shaken.

“There’s more,” Jonah said. “A rider just came in. Greta Voss left Pinewood two days ago. Heading north.”

“Why?”

“Maybe she heard who bought her stepdaughter. Maybe she wants more money.”

“Or maybe she wants something else.”

“What?”

I didn’t know. I only knew that when I pictured that woman’s carriage rolling toward my gates, my hands curled into fists.

“Double the guards at the gate,” I said. “No one in without my word.”

“Yes, Alpha.”

He left. I stood alone, staring at the notes.

Yesterday afternoon, I had watched her ride Sable around the yard. She sat that mare like she had been born in the saddle. Like a woman who had ridden into war camps and come out with the peace treaty.

Dancers don’t ride like that. Dancers don’t give orders like generals. And dancers don’t flinch at the word arrow. I had seen her shoulder jerk behind the shutters the night I practiced beneath her window.

I didn’t know what she was. But I knew what she wasn’t.

Then I heard it. A thunk. A shout. The sound of fifty warriors at morning practice.

I grabbed my bow and went down to the yard.

The sun was just breaking over the ridge. Steam rose from the horses’ backs. My warriors stood in rows, loosing arrows at straw targets, laughing and cursing in the cold.

I took my place at the end of the line. I notched an arrow. I let it fly. It struck dead center.

“Show-off,” Jonah muttered.

I notched another.

That’s when the whole yard went quiet.

I knew before I turned. I felt it, the way you feel a storm in your bones. Every warrior had stopped shooting. Every head had turned toward the gate.

Ember stood at the edge of the yard.

The sun caught the edge of her braid and turned it copper. For one second, I forgot the war council. I forgot Greta Voss. I forgot every rule I had ever made. Then I remembered I was an Alpha in front of fifty men, and I schooled my face back into stone.

She wore a simple linen shirt and borrowed trousers. Her hair was braided over one shoulder. She looked small against the snow. But she didn’t walk like a small woman. She walked like she owned every inch of ground.

She walked past old Ferris, and he forgot to close his mouth. She walked past two young warriors who had laughed at me in the dining hall for being “whipped,” and they found a sudden interest in their boots.

The woman was a force of nature.

She stopped at the end of my line. Fifty warriors stared at her.

“Alpha,” she said.

Her voice carried across the whole yard.

“I want to learn to shoot.”

My fingers went still on the bowstring. I looked into her eyes. They were steady. Her hands were not. And something in her face said she had faced arrows before.

“Teach me,” she said. “Here. Now. In front of everyone.”

And under the soap and the snow, I smelled it again. Her wolf. Stirring. Waking.

Jonah groaned softly.

“Of course,” I heard myself say.