The Rejected Luna's Three Mates

Rowan

Chapter 7: Rowan

"Rowan?"

The name left my mouth like a prayer and a wound at once.

Rowan Ashby lifted his bruised face, and the boy I'd known for eight years looked back at me from a man's body. Dark curls plastered to his forehead. A cut along his cheekbone. The same crooked smile that had gotten me through every winter at Silvermoon, now trembling at the corners.

"You were sent away," I said, my voice cracking. "Three years ago. Garrick said you'd gone to the southern border. You never wrote."

"I wrote every week." He coughed, and blood flecked his lip. "She burned them."

Elowen stroked the hair back from his forehead, almost tenderly. He flinched from her touch.

"Rowan was the first of your mates to awaken," she said. "A wolf without a pack is so easy to keep." She smiled at me. "Do you know what the Blood Moon ritual requires, darling?"

"Chains," I said through my teeth. "A throne."

"Love."

The word hung in the chamber like smoke.

"The heir's power can't be taken. It has to be given. And nothing makes a wolf give more freely than the people she can't bear to lose."

She doesn't need to kill me, I realized, slow and cold. She needs me to break.

My mates understood at the same moment. Dominic's snarl shook the walls. Kael's claws slid out. And Rowan, bleeding and bound, whispered, "Don't look at me, Lyra. Look at them."

"Take her," Elowen said.

The Order poured down the stairs.

Everything became teeth and silver and noise. Kael hit the first wave like a thunderclap, half-shifted, his roar ripping through the chamber. Dominic fought like a man with a vow to keep, every strike aimed to put himself between me and the blades.

A guard swung a silver chain at my face.

I didn't think. I moved, and white fire poured down my arms. The chain melted to droplets before it touched me.

More, my wolf crooned. Let them in. Feel them.

"Dominic!" I screamed.

He was already there, catching me around the waist as a guard crumpled at our feet. His eyes blazed like twin moons. "Tell me what you need."

"I don't know! The fire comes when..." Heat flooded my face. "When you touch me."

Something dark and wicked crossed his mouth. "Then I'll touch you."

He kissed me.

It wasn't gentle. It was two years of grief and hunger poured into one desperate collision. His hand slid into my hair, the other splayed across my back, hauling me against him until no space was left between us. My fingers fisted in his torn shirt. The mark on my shoulder blazed, and white light burst from my skin in a wave.

Every guard within ten feet went flying.

Dominic pulled back a hair, panting, forehead against mine. "Again?"

"Dominic."

"Is that a yes?"

A growl cut through the chaos. "My turn."

Kael seized my wrist and spun me into the curve of his arm. Before I could breathe, his mouth was on mine, hot and certain and devastating, smoke and storm on his tongue, his hand fisting at my waist like he was afraid I'd vanish. The light flared again, silver threaded with gold.

The chamber shook. The crystals cracked.

"Enough!" Elowen shrieked. "Seize the boy!"

Rowan's chains snapped like thread.

He staggered forward, and Dominic and Kael caught him on either side. For one dizzy second, the three of them stood shoulder to shoulder in front of me, bruised, furious, and mine.

Rowan's eyes found mine. "Go," he breathed. "I'll find you. I swear on the moon."

"I'm not leaving you!"

"You're not. I'm right behind you." That crooked smile again, and my heart broke a little. "Run, Lyra."

Kael hoisted Garrick over his shoulder. Dominic took my hand. Together we ran for the east tunnel, the one Kael had mapped earlier, while the Order's shrieks and the howl of the cracking throne chased us through the dark.

We burst out onto a cliff at the edge of the forest, gasping, soaked in sweat and rain.

The sky had gone red.

A bloated crimson moon hung low over the trees, swollen and wrong, a full week early.

"The Blood Moon," Kael said, horrified. "She's moved the ritual up."

"Then we stop her tonight," Dominic said. "We just need..."

A weak hand caught my sleeve.

Garrick lay where Kael had set him down, his breath thin and wet. A dark stain was spreading across his side. I hadn't even seen the blade.

"Father," I choked. It was the first time I'd ever called him that.

He smiled, tired and gentle. "Listen to me, Lyra." His grip tightened. "Your mother..."

"I know. Seraphine. She died."

"No." His eyes were fixed on the blood-red moon. "She didn't. Seraphine never died. Elowen caged her, eighteen years ago." He dragged in a rattling breath. "She's the throne, Lyra. And she's been waiting for you."

His hand fell away.

The wind went still.

I knelt there on the cliff with a dead man's blood on my hands and a red moon in my eyes, while somewhere in the dark behind us, a boy with brown eyes and a crooked smile was fighting his way back to me.