They Cut Me Loose, So I Bound Their Enemy

They made me kneel on the moon stone. It was cold. That was the first thing. The second thing was that every wolf in Greyfen had come to watch, and not one of them would look at my face. I counted heartbeats. One. Two. Three. An old habit. My mother taught it to me when I was small enough to fit under her arm. Count, Tamsin. Fear can't keep up with numbers. Fourteen. Fifteen. Theron stood above me in the silver robe I sewed for his Alpha ceremony five years ago. I knew every stitch in it. I bled on the collar when the needle slipped. He didn't look at me either. "Pack of Greyfen," he said. His voice carried the way it always did. Warm. Easy. The voice that made people trust him. "The Moon has blessed me." Someone gasped. Not loud. Just enough. He reached behind him and a girl stepped forward. Odette Marsh. Twenty-two, honey hair, a white dress so thin the torchlight went straight through it. I set her broken wrist last winter. She cried and I held her hand. She held that same wrist up now. A silver crescent glowed on the inside of it. A moon-mark. A true fated bond. The kind every she-wolf prays for and almost none of us ever get. My throat closed. Twenty-six. Twenty-seven. "I found my fated mate," Theron said. "I didn't ask for it. I didn't choose it. The Moon chose for me." He finally looked down at me. His eyes were soft. That was the worst part. He looked at me like a dog that had to be put down, and he was sorry about it. "Tamsin has been a good Luna," he said. "No one can say she hasn't. But a bond the Moon didn't bless can't stand next to one she did. I'm asking for the Unbinding." The word moved through the crowd like cold water. Unbinding. Nobody came back from an Unbinding the same. Some lost their wolves. Some went half wild, ran into the Thornline, and never came out. I looked for Hesper. She was where she always was. Front row. Gray braid over one shoulder, healer's apron still tied on because she came straight from the infirmary. She raised me after my mother died. She taught me every herb I know. She wasn't looking at me. She was looking at the Priestess's silver cup. "Hesper," I whispered. Her mouth tightened. That was all. The Priestess came down the steps. Old. Spotted hands. Hood pulled so low I could only see her chin. She knelt in front of me and filled the cup from a jar of black water. "Drink, child." My hands shook so hard the water slopped over my fingers. So cold it burned. I looked up at Theron one last time. "Five years," I said. Quiet. Just for him. His jaw moved. "Drink it, Tam." So I drank. For a second, nothing. Then the Priestess pressed her thumb to the center of my chest and said the words, and the world tore in half. I've felt pain before. I'm a healer. I've pulled arrows out of men who screamed until they passed out. I've set bones with my knee on a warrior's chest. This was different. It felt like someone tied a rope to every part of me and yanked them all at once. Theron's bond went first. It snapped like a wet branch, and something inside me howled. My wolf. She threw herself against my ribs, and I folded over and put my forehead on the stone. Then the pack bond. One thread. Ten. Two hundred. Each one ripping loose. I couldn't breathe. My nails split on the stone. This is it, I thought. This is where she dies. This is where I go quiet inside forever. Then something cracked. Not a bone. Deeper. Somewhere under my heart, like ice on a river in spring. A long, slow crack, and then a rush. Light came out of my hands. Silver. Thin as smoke. It leaked between my fingers and pooled on the moon stone, and for one second I saw lines everywhere. Glowing lines running from wolf to wolf through the crowd. Hundreds of them. Tangled and bright. And every single one bent toward me like grass in wind. I closed my fists. The light went out. The Priestess's cup cracked down the middle in her hand. She stared at it. Then at me. Her lips moved but nothing came out. "It's done," Theron said. Too loud. Too fast. "It's done. The bond is cut." My wolf was still there. I could feel her. Hurt. Low. Panting. But there. Nobody else noticed. They were all watching Odette, who had started crying pretty tears, and Theron, who wrapped an arm around her waist. He raised his chin to the pack. "Tamsin Ardley is no longer Luna of Greyfen. She is no longer pack. By moonset she is rogue." He paused. Softer: "Leave before dawn, Tam. I can't protect you after that." Protect me. I got up. My knees almost went. Nobody helped. I pressed my left hand to my thigh, right over the old burn scar on my palm, and it was hot. Hot like the night my mother died. I didn't cry. I want that on the record. I walked down the steps and through the crowd, and they moved away from me like I had a fever. Then it happened. Halfway to the temple gate, a weight came off me. I don't know how else to say it. Like a pack I'd carried so long I forgot it was there. My shoulders rose. My lungs filled all the way for the first time in five years. Behind me, someone screamed. I turned. The oldest warrior in Greyfen, the man who taught every pup in the valley how to fall without breaking, was on the ground. He was clutching his thigh. The bear wound. Twenty years old. Healed so clean I never once saw him limp. Blood was pouring through his fingers. The wound had opened. All of it. Like it was new. And the whole pack turned and looked at me.