FORSAKEN LUNA RISING QUEEN

Chapter 1: The ghost at the feast The roast smelled like rosemary and bone marrow, and I wasn’t allowed to eat it. I stood in the yard behind the packhouse with my sleeves shoved to the elbow, scrubbing dried blood off the butchering stones. Cold water. Lye soap that split the skin across my knuckles. Through the kitchen window, the noise of the feast rolled out in waves: laughter, the scrape of benches, someone banging a cup on the table for a toast. Tatiana’s toast. “To Elijah,” a man called. “And to the family he left us.” Cheers. A lot of them. Loud enough to rattle the glass. I scrubbed harder. The stone didn’t care. The blood had gone brown in the cracks, and it wouldn’t lift. Six hours ago I had set that table. Forty places, the good plates, the pewter cups Caleb’s mother had carried over the mountains. I’d counted the chairs twice because I always count twice. Forty. I’d put myself at the end, beside Caleb, where the Luna sits. When I came back from the cellar with the last jug of mead, the end chair was gone. Not moved. Gone. There was a smear on the floorboards where someone had dragged it out, and a small wooden stool in its place, low to the ground. For Leo, Marta said, not looking at me. Tatiana wanted him close. So I’d wiped my hands on my apron and gone to find the stones that needed cleaning. A log shifted in the fire pit by the wall. Sparks spiraled up and died. I kept my eyes on the water. Don’t look. You look, you lose. I looked. The kitchen window was a yellow square, and in the middle of it sat my mate. Caleb had his head bent. Leo was in his lap, four years old, sticky-cheeked, a drumstick clutched in one fist like a sword. The boy said something and Caleb laughed. A real laugh, low and rough, the kind I hadn’t heard since the funeral. His thumb wiped gravy off the kid’s chin. Gentle. So gentle. My chest pulled tight, and the soap slid out of my hand. Beside him Tatiana leaned in, black hair loose over one bare shoulder, eyes glassy and wet. She touched his sleeve. Just two fingers. Caleb’s head turned toward her like she’d called his name. The bond between us hummed under my ribs, a thin wire pulled taut. I waited for it to tug the other way. For him to feel me out here, shaking in the cold, and lift his head. Nothing. I pressed my wet palm flat against my sternum and made myself breathe. In through the nose. Smoke, rosemary, lye. Out through the teeth. “Elena.” I flinched. Marta stood in the back doorway with a stack of dirty plates, her mouth set in a line. She didn’t come down the steps. Nobody came down the steps anymore. “The platters need washing before the second course,” she said. “And Tatiana’s room needs fresh linens. The blue ones, not the grey.” “The blue ones are mine.” My voice came out smaller than I wanted. Marta’s eyes slid away, over my shoulder, to the treeline. “Alpha said it’s fine.” Alpha said. Not Caleb said. Not your mate said. Eight months ago he would have torn the roof off the house over a stained sheet. Now Alpha said, and Marta stared at the trees, and I was supposed to carry my own linens up the stairs and make another woman’s bed. “Elena,” Marta said, quieter. “Just do it. Don’t make it harder.” Harder for who? I almost asked. The words sat behind my teeth, hot and sharp. But the window laughed again, and Leo shrieked something happy, and I understood that nobody inside that house was going to hear a word I said. I could scream until my throat tore and the wolf in my chest would only pace and pace, a caged thing with no one to blame but herself. I picked up the soap. “Fine,” I said. Marta went back in. The door clicked. I scrubbed. The water had gone pink around my wrists. My fingers were so cold they felt like someone else’s, and I watched them move across the stone like I was watching a stranger do my chores. Eight months. That was how long it had been since Elijah’s body came home wrapped in grey cloth. Eight months since Caleb stopped sleeping beside me. First he sat up by the fire, then he took the study, then he stopped coming home at all, just sat in Elijah’s old room with the door shut and Elijah’s coat in his hands. I’d given him time. I’d brought him tea. I’d let him go quiet and hadn’t pushed. And then Tatiana arrived with her bruised eyes and her son, and he came back to life. Just not for me. A burst of laughter. Chairs scraping. The fire popped. The wind changed. I went still with my hands in the water. Something had come in on the air. Not the feast. Not the pack. Something threaded through the wood smoke from the north, from the border, from the dark line of pines where Bloodmoon land ended and nobody was supposed to cross. Pine. Cold iron. Ash, burnt down to the bone. My wolf lifted her head. She had never done that for Caleb. Not once. Not even on the night we mated. The hair rose along my arms, one slow wave, and the water in the bucket trembled around my wrists. I hadn’t moved. I hadn’t breathed. Behind me, inside the house, the laughter went on. Out in the trees, something answered it with a single low growl