FORSAKEN LUNA RISING QUEEN

Chapter 5: The King’s Suite

The water hit my hands, and I almost screamed.

Hot. So hot. It poured over my knuckles and the cracks lit up like someone had pressed embers into them, a sharp, bright, blistering sting that raced up my wrists and made my teeth snap shut. I jerked back. Gripped the copper rim of the tub. Made myself put them under again.

Breathe. In through the nose. Out.

The sting rolled over into something else. Slowly, then all at once, the ache in my bones began to loosen, like a fist uncurling after six years. Steam rose off the surface in thick, slow ropes, scented with cedar and something green and sharp I couldn’t name. It curled against my face. Settled into my hair.

I knelt on the stone beside the tub with my wrecked hands in the water and my eyes shut, and for a full minute I just let it hurt.

Then I stood.

Odessa had left a robe on the hook, thick grey wool, soft as a pelt. She’d also left a mirror. I hadn’t noticed it when I walked in. It stood against the far wall, tall as a door, framed in black iron, and the silver in it was polished so clean it threw the lamplight back in a warm, steady wash.

I peeled off the dress. Dropped it. Stepped out of my boots and didn’t look at the heap they made on the floor.

Then I looked up.

A stranger stared back.

Thin. That came first. My collarbones jutted like handles. My ribs showed in neat pale rows under skin gone the color of tallow, and my hips had a sharpness I didn’t remember, bone pushing hard against flesh. Smudged shadows hung under my eyes, deep purple, nearly bruises. My hair, which Caleb used to wind around his fist and call the color of chestnut in autumn, hung in dull strings against my neck.

When had I last eaten a whole meal? Sitting down? With someone?

I couldn’t find the answer.

My gaze dropped to my left shoulder. To the place beneath the collarbone where his mark had lived.

It used to burn. Not painfully, a steady warmth, a second heartbeat pulsing under the skin. Silver-white, curved like a crescent, the sign every wolf in the valley could see and read: this one belongs to Bloodmoon. Touch her and answer to Caleb.

I touched it now.

Dead. A flat, dull grey scar, puckered at the edges, cold to my fingertips. Like a burn that had healed wrong. Like a brand on a cow that had been sold.

I dragged my nails across it. Nothing. Not a flicker. No echo of him down the line.

My stomach turned over.

I climbed into the tub before my knees could give out.

The water closed over my thighs, my hips, my ribs, hot enough to turn my skin red, and I sank until it lapped my chin. The cedar steam rose around my face. The copper held the heat against my back like a palm.

My head fell back against the rim.

And it hit me.

Not gently. All at once, a wall of it.

I had walked away. In front of thirty warriors, in front of a pack that had known my face since I was nineteen, I had stepped across a line, and the bond had snapped, and I had let it. I had left a mate. Left a home. Left every wolf who’d ever shared a fire with me.

Now I was lying naked in the private bath of Malakai of Duskfang. The King. The wolf who’d burned three packs off the northern ridge, the one mothers whispered about to keep their pups in bed.

His sheets were in the next room. His scent was in the steam.

I stared at the ceiling and couldn’t blink.

Three sharp knocks sounded on the heavy oak door.

I was out of the tub before the second knock landed.

Water sheeted off my skin and slapped the stone. I snatched the grey robe from its hook, dragged it around my ribs, cinched the belt so tight it dug in. The wool swallowed me to the ankles. The sleeves hung past my fingertips.

“Enter,” I said, and my voice cracked.

The door swung open.

Not him.

Odessa stepped in first, a tray balanced on her forearms. Behind her came a small, stooped woman in a patched green shawl, white hair pinned in a knot, a leather satchel clutched to her chest. Her eyes were the pale brown of weak tea, crinkled at the edges, and they went straight to my hands.

“Oh, child,” she said softly. “Let me see.”

I held them out. I didn’t mean to. They just rose, and she took them in hers, dry, warm, her thumbs barely brushing my wrists.

“Lye,” she muttered. “Months of it, by the look. Whoever let this happen...” She stopped. Pressed her lips together. Opened the satchel.

Out came a small clay jar sealed with black wax. She cracked it with her thumbnail, and a smell rolled up, honey and crushed pine needles and something sharp underneath, like snow.

“King’s own stores,” she said. “He sent me to the vault himself. Said nothing but the best.” Her eyes lifted. “I’ve been healer here forty years, girl. I’ve never once seen that man go to the vault for anyone.”

My throat locked.

She worked the salve into the cracks with the tips of her fingers, so lightly I barely felt it. Cool, then warm, then a slow, spreading ease that went all the way into the bone. Odessa set the tray on a low table by the fire and began pulling the lids off silver dishes. Steam poured out. Roast lamb, black with pepper. Buttered bread. A bowl of stew thick enough to stand a spoon in.

My stomach clenched so hard it hurt.

The healer wound clean white linen around each hand, snug but never tight, and tied off the ends. She patted the last knot.

“There,” she said. “Now eat.”

The door opened again.

No knock. Just the soft push of oak and a sudden shift in the air, a pressure behind my sternum, a settling of weight. Odessa went rigid. The healer stepped back and bowed, and Odessa followed, both of them backing out with their eyes lowered, and the door clicked shut behind them.

Quiet.

Malakai stood just inside the room.

He’d shed the black coat and the leather gloves. Dark trousers. A charcoal shirt with the sleeves shoved to the elbow, collar open at the throat. His forearms were corded and scarred, and his hair was damp, as though he’d put his head under cold water. He looked almost ordinary.

Nothing about the room agreed with that.

He crossed to me in four strides. His eyes dropped to my bandaged hands, then to the robe pooled around my feet, and a muscle moved in his jaw. He pulled a chair out from the table and sat. Pushed the tray toward me with two fingers.

“Eat.”

I didn’t move.

“Elena.”

“I’m not...” I swallowed. “I’m not sure I’m allowed.”

His eyes lifted.

“Nobody in this house will ever ask you that again.” Low, level, absolute. “You eat when you’re hungry. You sleep where you want. You take what’s yours. If anyone tells you different, you bring me their name.”

The fire cracked.

“Now sit down.”

I sat.

The lamb was so tender it fell apart under the fork. I ate with both bandaged hands wrapped around the handle, ate until my eyes burned, and he watched me the whole time, silent, unhurried.

When I set the fork down, he leaned back.

“Your Alpha sent a beta to the gate an hour ago,” he said. “Garrick. He wants you returned.”

My stomach dropped.

“He’s got a hundred wolves behind him.” Malakai’s mouth curved, slow, cold. “So tell me, little Luna. Do you want to hide in this room until it’s over? Or do you want to come downstairs and watch me tear them apart?”