THE LAST MOON WOLF

The day Mara Voss turned twenty, she woke up to a bucket of ice water. She gasped and shot upright on her thin cot in the pantry storeroom, water streaming down her face, her hair, her one clean nightshirt. The cold punched the air out of her lungs. “Rise and shine, Omega.” Kiera Blackthorne stood in the doorway, empty bucket swinging from one manicured hand. She was twenty one, golden haired, and the pack’s favorite. She smiled the way other girls smiled at puppies. Right before kicking them. “The Luna wants the great hall spotless by noon,” Kiera said. “Every floor. Every window. Every candlestick.” Mara wiped her eyes. “It’s six in the morning.” “Then you’d better hurry.” Kiera left. The door swung shut behind her, and the laughter of her two friends echoed down the corridor. Mara sat still for a moment, shivering. Then she did what she always did. She swallowed the burn in her throat and got up. The storeroom was the size of a coffin with a door. It held a cot, a crate, a crooked shelf, and the smell of onions that no amount of scrubbing could ever lift out of the walls. Mara dressed in the dark, as she did every morning, and hummed under her breath while she laced her boots. It was a scrap of a tune with no words. She had no idea where she had learned it. It simply lived in her, the way her own pulse did, and it was the only thing in Silverpine that had never been taken from her. Silverpine Pack had a hundred and forty wolves. Mara had lived among them for fourteen years, ever since the night her parents died in the rogue attack and Alpha Gideon took in the “poor orphan girl” with a speech about the pack’s generosity. The generosity had lasted about a week. After that, she was the Omega. The lowest rank. The one who scrubbed, hauled, cooked, and carried. The one who ate after everyone else, if there was anything left. The one who kept her eyes down. She was also, she reminded herself as she dragged the mop bucket into the great hall, twenty years old today. Twenty was the age wolves found their mates. Every girl in the pack had a story about it. Kiera had told hers a hundred times, loudly, in the kitchen, while Mara peeled potatoes at her elbow. A scent like honey and woodsmoke. A look across a crowded room. The world tipping sideways and then righting itself, forever changed. Mara had listened to every word and never once said a thing. Omegas did not get stories like that. They got the leftovers. Her stomach fluttered, and she hated herself for it. She had learned not to hope. Hope was a luxury for wolves who ate hot meals. But still. A mate would see her. The Moon Goddess did not make mistakes. A mate would look at the girl in the patched dress and know her, instantly, down to her bones. A mate might even be kind. She let herself think it only in pieces, the way you would test ice with one foot. A mate who knew her name. A mate who might sit beside her at the long table instead of making her stand behind it with a pitcher. She scrubbed the stone floor on her knees until her hands cracked. Her wolf, a faint, shy presence she had never once heard speak, curled quietly in the back of her mind. Mara had never shifted. Every other wolf in the pack had shifted by sixteen. Mara, at twenty, still could not so much as grow a claw. The old cook slipped her a heel of bread at the kitchen door that morning without a word, pressing it into her palm and closing her fingers around it. It was the closest thing to a birthday gift Mara had received in fourteen years. She ate it in four bites, standing up, in case anyone came. Then she went back to the floors. “Defective,” the healer had said when she was seventeen. “Some wolves just don’t have much of a beast in them.” The whole pack had heard. It was the best joke they’d ever had. “Still on the floor, I see.” Mara’s hands stilled on the brush. Luna Celeste had entered the hall in a cloud of expensive perfume, her silk gown whispering over the stone. Behind her walked her son. Dorian Blackthorne, heir to Silverpine. Tall, dark eyed, shoulders like a doorframe. Every unmated she wolf in the territory dreamed about him. Mara had never dreamed about him. She had never dared. In fourteen years, Dorian Blackthorne had spoken perhaps a dozen words to her, and every one of them had been an order. Once, when she was thirteen, he had stepped around her bucket in the corridor instead of kicking it over, as his friends did. She had thought about that for a week. That was how little she had to measure him by. He looked right through her, the way he always did, as if she were a stain on the stone. And then, halfway across the hall, he stopped. His nostrils flared. His whole body went rigid. Slowly, like a man pulled by a rope, he turned his head and looked down at the girl on her knees. The air between them snapped tight. Mara’s heart slammed against her ribs. A scent hit her. Pine, smoke, rain on hot stone. It filled her head and rang through her blood like a bell. Mate. The word came from somewhere deep inside her. Her wolf, her silent, shy, useless wolf, lifted her head and whispered it. Everything else fell away. The scrape of the brush, the drip of the bucket, the cold of the stone through her knees. For one bright, impossible moment, the great hall held only the two of them and a thread of light pulled tight between them. Mara had never in her life felt so seen. Mara stared up at him, lips parted, tears already burning. Dorian’s face twisted. It was not joy. It was not wonder. It was horror. “No,” he said hoarsely. “No. That’s not possible.” Luna Celeste’s eyes moved between them. Understanding dawned, and with it came something cold and sharp and satisfied. “Well,” she said softly. “How unfortunate.” Mara scrambled to her feet. “Dorian, I…” “Don’t.” His voice cracked like a whip. “Don’t say my name.” He stepped back as though she were contagious. Then Luna Celeste smiled, and Mara felt the floor drop out from under her. “We’ll do this properly,” the Luna said. “At the Moon Ceremony. Tonight. In front of the entire pack.”