Blood Moon Queen

Chapter 1 The Alpha didn't raise his voice. That was the worst part. "Selena Hart is wolfless." He said it like he was reading a list. The Alder Pack stood in a tight circle, two hundred people shoulder to shoulder under a darkening sky, and none of them looked surprised. I kept my chin up. I'd practiced that in the mirror for three nights. "Twenty-two years," "and she has never shifted. Her wolf has never answered the moon. We cannot keep what does not exist." alpha Darus said Somewhere to my left, Marla Kessing made a small, pleased sound. I didn't look at her. I'd learned a long time ago that looking gave people something to hold onto. "You understand," Draus said, "the pack cannot protect what it cannot claim." Exile he wouldn't say the word himself. He wanted me to say it, or wanted the silence to say it instead. "I understand," I said, and my voice held steady, which surprised me too. A murmur moved through the crowd not pity, more like disappointment that I hadn't cracked in front of them. I wasn't going to give them that. Then the burning started. It began under my ribs, small and hot, and spread so fast I had to lock my knees to stay standing. I pressed my hand against my chest, trying to keep it hidden. Run. The voice wasn't outside me. It moved through the same place my own thoughts did, but it wasn't mine. I looked around. No one else had heard it. Draus kept talking about territory lines and paperwork, and the pack kept staring at me like I'd already left, and I understood I was the only one who'd heard that voice. I must be losing my mind, I thought. Maybe this is just what losing everything feels like. Then, quieter: They are coming. "Selena." Someone yelled from the crowd A hand closed around my wrist Old Yarrow, the pack healer. She'd pushed through the crowd without anyone stopping her, which people didn't usually do around Yarrow. "Give me your arm." "I'm fine—" "Give me your arm." I gave her my arm. She pushed my sleeve up past the elbow, and I watched her face change. There was a mark on my skin. Pale lines, spreading out from my elbow like frost on a window, too even to be a bruise. It hadn't been there that morning. I would have noticed. "What is that," I said, though it wasn't really a question. Her face had already told me it was something bad. "The Moon didn't reject you," Yarrow said, quiet enough that only I could hear. Behind her, Draus kept talking, still not looking, still narrating the end of my life in the pack while something impossible spread across my skin. "Then why can't I shift?" My throat felt tight. Twenty-two years of asking that question, and never once getting a real answer. "Why has there never been anything there?" Yarrow looked up at me, and for the first time in my life, I saw her scared. "Your wolf isn't missing," she said. "She's sleeping." I wanted to ask what that meant. Sleeping for twenty-two years. But the burning under my ribs flared hot and the question stuck in my throat. The wolves noticed next. It started at the edges of the circle. People people shifting their weight, heads turning toward me one by one, like something was pulling them. Somewhere a dog's hackles rose on its own. A child started crying and was hushed too quickly. "Selena." Yarrow's grip on my wrist tightened. "Your eyes—" I didn't need a mirror. I could feel something changing, moving through me, and from the way the whole pack had gone still and quiet, I knew it must show, even in the dim light. Wake, the voice said, and this time it wasn't quiet at all. Yarrow stepped back from me like I'd caught fire. "It can't be," she said under her breath, and whatever she saw on my face made her press a hand to her mouth. "She's supposed to be a story. A warning. Not a girl standing here, being sent away—" She didn't finish. She didn't need to. I could see the word she wouldn't say, and I knew I'd spend a long time learning what it meant. Above us, the sky changed. The moon that rose over Alder territory that night wasn't silver. It was deep red, and it poured that red light down over two hundred faces turned up to watch it, and every wolf in that circle dropped to their knees at once, like something had cut the strings holding them up. My Queen, the voice said, and this time it didn't sound like a warning at all. Something broke open inside me not pain, more like pressure finally finding a way out and I tipped my head back and howled. It didn't sound human. It didn't sound like any wolf I'd ever heard, either. It rolled out past the trees, past the river, into a night that had never once felt like it belonged to me until that moment. Far away, impossibly far, something answered.