The Unwanted Luna's Rise

Chapter Four

Kade's Point of View

"I hate politics," I told Ryder before either of us stepped out of the vehicle.

Ryder smiled without looking at me. "And yet here we are."

Here we were.

The Stonecrest Pack's territory sat in a valley between two mountain ridges and the drive in had taken us through pine forest thick enough to block the sky. The pack house was a converted lodge, large and made of dark wood, with a porch wrapping the entire front. Smaller than mine by half. But clean and well-kept. It sat at the edge of the tree line like it had grown there.

I had been Alpha of the Stonepeak Pack since I was sixteen. Not by choice. My parents were killed by a rogue ambush on the southern border when I was away training with the northern warriors. By the time the news reached me there was no one left to lead. The pack needed someone and I was the only option.

I had spent five years making sure I was the right option.

My pack was the largest in the northern region. We held the widest territory, trained the best warriors, and ran the strongest trade network of any pack within three hundred miles. I had built every piece of that from the grief and the rage of being sixteen and parentless and suddenly responsible for four hundred lives.

I had not found my mate.

This was becoming a problem. Not for me personally. I did not spend much time wanting things I had not found yet. But my pack noticed the thinning of my patience, the shortening of my temper, the way my wolf had started pressing against the inside of me like he wanted out whether or not I was willing. An unmated Alpha who went too long without his other half became dangerous. Not by choice. Just by nature.

Ryder had pushed me toward this Summit for exactly that reason.

The front door of the pack house opened and a man I recognized from photographs came down the porch steps. Alpha Marcus Ashfield. Broad, aging at the temples, carrying himself with the careful dignity of someone aware that his pack was not large enough to impress anyone.

"Alpha Rivers. We were not expecting you so soon."

"We made better time than expected," Ryder said before I could speak. This was one of the many reasons I kept him close. He said the diplomatic thing while I was still deciding whether the honest thing was worth the trouble.

We went inside.

The interior was better than the exterior suggested. Someone with a real eye had chosen the furnishings and colors. Everything coordinated without drawing attention to itself. The floors were clean. The air smelled of pine and wood polish and something that lived underneath both of those things. Something I could not name yet. Something that made my wolf's ears come up.

The Luna offered a tour. I passed it to Ryder, who accepted it with far more warmth than I had to spare after six hours in a vehicle.

I was shown to a room on the south end of the second-floor hallway. Forest green walls, heavy dark wood furniture, two windows facing the mountain line. It was quiet. The windows were already open and cold pine air moved through the room in long, slow currents.

I sat on the edge of the bed and let the silence settle.

And then it hit me.

The scent.

It was not strong. Barely there, like something that had been in the room and left hours before I arrived. Pine bark and cold mountain water, and underneath that something warmer that did not have a clean name.

My wolf came forward inside me in a way he had not moved in years.

I stood up and turned slowly to face the room. The windows were open. The scent came from the fabric of the bed, from the surface of the furniture, from the very air still moving through the curtains.

Someone had been here today. Someone had cleaned this room, made this bed, opened these windows.

And my wolf knew with a certainty I had no framework to argue against that whoever had left this scent was my mate.

I opened the door.

The hallway was dim. The evening light came in thin and low from a window at the far end. I stood in the doorway and let the air from the hall move past me.

The scent was stronger here. More recent.

Ryder appeared at the top of the stairs. He read my face before I said anything, because reading my face was something he had been doing for five years.

"What is it?"

"The person who cleaned my room." My voice came out steadier than the thing happening inside my chest. "Find out who it is."

He disappeared back down the staircase. I stood in the doorway and breathed.

I had been told, as every wolf was told, that a mate bond was unmistakable. That you would know when it happened. I had half believed it and half considered it to be the kind of sentimental story wolves told each other because the truth, that you might never find your paired person, was too hard to sit with.

Now I believed it completely.

I moved down the hallway slowly, following the trail the way you follow a scent through the woods. Careful. Patient.

The scent grew stronger as I moved toward the staircase. Stronger still at the top of the stairs.

Then I heard it. The sound of something scraping against tile. Below me, in the direction of what I guessed was the dining room.

My wolf pressed forward.

I went down the stairs.

The light in the lower hallway was warm and low. The dining room door was half open and through it I could see the figure kneeling on the floor.

A girl. Small. Brown hair tied back. Her shirt was stained with food. She was picking up pieces of a broken plate with her hands and her head was down and she moved with the careful efficiency of someone very used to this particular task.

She did not hear me.

I stood at the end of the hallway and the scent reached me full and complete, nothing faint about it now, nothing subtle. Pine and cold water and that warm thing underneath.

It was her.

She was the one who had made the bed in my room. Who had opened the windows. Who had been moving through this house all day.

And she was on her knees on a dining room floor, picking up pieces of a broken plate, with a bruise forming across the side of her face.

My wolf did not give me the information as a thought. He simply knew it, the way you know the ground is solid beneath your feet without needing to test it.

She was my mate.

And I had no idea what had just been done to her, but I was going to find out.