Luna Paige's Arc

Chapter 6 of 10

Michael slept past dawn. Luna eased her hand from his and went downstairs. The silver wolf was already at the back door, ears forward, watching her. He wanted out. He wanted her out with him. She took a shawl and followed. He led her past the garden wall and into the trees. He moved like he knew where he was going, so she let him choose. They came out in a broad clearing ringed with flowers and pale roots. He stopped in the middle and turned to face her. His hackles were up. "Don't," she said. "Not you." He didn't move. He stared. She had seen him stare at the pack that way at the boundary stones. Now he was aiming it at her. She sat down in the dirt so she was smaller than him. "Say it. Whatever it is. Say it." He padded a slow circle around her. When he stopped he pressed his forehead against hers, hard, once. Then he stepped back and growled. Low. Not a threat. A verdict. She understood. She had chosen the sickbed. She had chosen the man. She had sat by a human while her brother slept on a rug, and the pack had felt it, and he had felt it worst of all. "I'm not choosing him over you," she said. "I'm choosing him and you." He huffed. He didn't believe her. She reached into her pocket and drew out one moonpetal she'd saved from the bouquet on Michael's table. She laid it in the dirt between them. "For you," she said. "Not for him. For you. The old rite. Read the book if you want." His eyes dropped to the flower. His ears flicked. He was listening now. "When the claim lifts, you go home. I stay long enough to help him stand alone. Then I come to the wood and break the curse and run with you again. I swear it on our mother." He lowered his head to the petal. He didn't take it. He set his nose beside it, close, the way he used to nose her ribs when they were both pups. Then he lay down in the dirt with the flower between his paws. She cried without moving her face. "Thank you." A branch cracked at the clearing's edge. A black wolf stepped through the flowers. Sleek. Bigger than her brother. Not pack she knew. It watched them both, then sat, patient, like it had been sent. Her brother stood. He put himself between her and the black wolf and did not growl. "Who sent you?" Luna asked. The black wolf didn't answer, of course. But its eyes went to the moonpetal in the dirt, then to her, and she understood one thing clearly: her three weeks had just gotten shorter.