The Unwanted Luna's Rise

Chapter Two

"The kitchen better be spotless in twenty minutes," my mother's voice came through the wall before six, "or I will make sure this is the worst birthday you have ever had."

I did not answer. There was no answer she wanted. I changed out of my run clothes and went to the kitchen.

I filled both large coffee makers first because the warriors got agitated before their coffee and an agitated warrior meant bruises I did not need. While the machines ran I pulled out the cast iron pans and ran the calculation I ran every morning. How many people, how many eggs, how much meat, how much bread. Twenty-three people living in the pack house. I could do it in my sleep. I mostly did.

My mother came in at six-fifteen wrapped in a silk robe that had cost more than my mattress. She poured herself a coffee, added cream, and sat at the kitchen table without looking at me once.

"You left the back door unlocked last night," she said.

I had not. I checked it twice. But disagreeing would cost me more than just agreeing.

"I am sorry, Luna. It will not happen again."

She made a sound that was not quite agreement and took her coffee out of the room.

By seven the dining room was filling. I carried out the trays myself, two trips for the eggs, two trips for the meat, one for the bread and the fruit I had cut. I moved quickly with my head down and my eyes on the floor just ahead of my feet. The trick was to be present without being visible. I had spent eighteen years getting good at it.

My father, Alpha Marcus Ashfield, sat at the head of the table the way he always did. Large. Still. The kind of man whose silence felt like something pressing on your chest. His dark hair had more gray in it this year. His eyes, when they moved, moved like something tracking prey.

He did not look at me when I set his plate down. He never did.

"The Summit guests will be arriving tomorrow afternoon," he said to the table. "I expect this house in perfect shape before they get here."

Beta Harris leaned forward with his elbows on the table. He was a stocky man with flat eyes and thick hands and he had hated me with a patience that my father's rage could not match. "What are you planning for the evening meal? I assume we are not allowing the girl near the food for something this important."

Harris never said my name. To him I was always the girl or the brat.

My father's jaw tightened. "I had not decided."

"She will humiliate us," Harris said. "Alpha Kade Rivers will be here. His pack controls the entire northern territory. We cannot afford to look incompetent in front of him."

I kept my face still and continued filling water glasses. I had heard of the Stonepeak Pack. Everyone had. They were the largest pack in three regions, known for their warriors and their wealth and their Alpha, who had taken over at sixteen after rogues killed his parents and had not lost a single border dispute since.

"We will have the event catered," my father said. He looked at Harris and then, remembering I existed, at me. "You will not be cooking for our guests. You will have every guest room cleaned and re-linened before they arrive. The meeting hall behind the house needs to be prepared as well. The grounds swept."

"Yes, Alpha."

He reached for his coffee mug. I did not see it coming because I was already turning toward the kitchen. The mug hit me at the corner of my left eye and I heard the c***k of ceramic against bone before I felt the sting.

I did not make a sound.

"Yes Alpha is not an answer. You will tell me when it is done."

"Yes, Alpha. I will report when everything is complete."

I walked back to the kitchen at a steady pace. I pressed a clean dish towel against the cut above my eye and checked my reflection in the face of the kettle. Not deep. A little blood. It would stop in minutes and heal by noon.

Wolves healed fast. I had always been grateful for that particular mercy.

As I pressed the cloth to my face I thought about what Harris had said. Alpha Kade Rivers. Stonepeak Pack.

My father's voice rose in the dining room with a new topic and the name was forgotten by everyone at the table.

But something about the way Harris had tightened when he said it made me think there was more happening with this Summit than a simple renewal of alliances.

I filed it away in the back of my mind where I kept all the things that were none of my business but that I noticed anyway.

I had been noticing things no one expected me to notice for eighteen years.

I pulled the towel away from my eye and checked it one more time in the kettle. The bleeding had stopped.

Outside the kitchen window the three black vehicles were still parked in the front gravel where I had seen them this morning. No one had mentioned early visitors at the breakfast table. My father had spoken about the Summit arrival as if it was still a day away.

Either he did not know someone had already arrived, or he knew and was choosing not to say anything yet.

I dried my hands and started making a mental list of the guest rooms. Ten of them. Each with its own closet, its own bathroom, its own color scheme that my mother had chosen years ago with the kind of care she had never once applied to me.

One of the rooms faced south. It had forest green walls and a view straight to the mountain line. It was the room I always cleaned last because I liked staying in it a little longer than necessary.

I wondered if the visitors from this morning would sleep in that room tonight.

I shook my head and started on the washing up.

Something about this Summit felt different from everything that had come before it.

I could not name it yet.

But the feeling sat at the back of my throat like the air before a storm.