The Barren Luna Reckoning
Lena Ashford has been the wolf-less Luna of Cedar Hollow for five years, and the pack
has never let her forget she has no wolf and no heir. The morning she finally learns she
is pregnant, her husband, Alpha Gavin, comes home from the border with another
woman on his arm. Sloane Brandt is the Beta's daughter, a warrior, and she is carrying
his pup.
Gavin asks Lena to be reasonable. Raise the child. Keep the title. He will make it up to her.
Locked in her room, humiliated in her own home, Lena stops waiting to be chosen. She
walks out into the night with a duffel bag and a secret she never got to tell.
Five years later, she is Vera Sinclair: CEO of the most powerful trading company between
the human and werewolf worlds, with a changed face, a wolf of her own, and a
five-year-old daughter whose illness could be treated only by the one man she can never
let find them. Gavin has spent five years searching for a wife who vanished. Now he is
falling for a stranger who feels impossibly familiar, and Vera must decide how much of
herself she can hide from a man who is closer to the truth every time they meet.
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Chapter: CHAPTER SIX: Five Years LaterVera POVThe lobby mirror is the only one in the building I don't look away from.It runs along the wall behind the security desk, floor to ceiling, and every morning at 8:14I pass it on the way to the elevator. A tall woman in a charcoal suit. Black hair cut blunt atthe jaw. Gold eyes. Nobody in the Sinclair Meridian lobby looks twice at her, except tomove out of her way.I used to have brown hair that never stayed where I put it. I used to have green eyes. Iused to take up less space than anyone else in a room, and I was good at it.Five years ago, in a county hospital bathroom in another state, eleven hours after mydaughter was born, my bones moved. I held on to a metal rail with both hands and bitthrough my own lip, and when it stopped I was on the tile and the person who stood upwas somebody else. A nurse found me and went pale. She said she had never seen a firstshift that late. She said it had never come on all at once.The first winter I worked nights on a loading dock
Last Updated: 2026-10-27
Chapter: CHAPTER FIVE: Two LinesGavin POVGideon Brandt has been talking, on and off, since this afternoon, and he hasn't finishedhis coffee.He sits across my desk with a legal pad on his knee and a pen he doesn't use. Sixty-oneyears old, gray at the temples, a man who has never raised his voice in a meeting and hasnever lost one. I have known him since I was twelve. I have never once seen him hurry."Six people on the household staff," he says. "Minimum. A night nurse. A dietitian, notthe clinic's, one of ours. Ninety grams of protein a day in the second trimester.""Fine.""The pup is going to be the first Alpha heir born in this territory in thirty years. Peopleare going to watch how she's treated." He turns a page I don't think has anything on it."And I'd like it understood how that will look. A woman carrying the heir of this pack,living in a guest room. Under a Luna who has, forgive me, shown very little interest inher.""Lena has shown interest.""Lena is frightened of her." I rub my eyes. It's past
Last Updated: 2026-10-27
Chapter: CHAPTER FOUR: The MarkLena POVThe voices come before the dark lifts.A wolf-less Luna.I'm in the great hall and every seat is full, and I'm standing in the middle of the floor inthe green dress with the box in my hands. Nobody has looked at me. They are all lookingat the doors.A Luna who can't give us a pup.Elder Pryce is laughing. Joel from the gate. Rourke, with his feet on the table. Marta hasher back to me, folding a towel. I say her name and she keeps folding. I try to open thebox, and there's nothing in it. The tissue paper is empty. I look up and the hall is silent,and then all sixty faces turn toward me at once.Hen, someone says. Hen. Hen.Water hits me in the face.I come up off the carpet with a sound I don't recognize. It's in my nose, my mouth,running down my collar. It's cold enough to hurt. I roll onto my side and cough, and myhand finds the carpet and it's soaked, and I hear a hollow plastic clunk as something isset down beside me. "Wow," says a voice above me. "You really were
Last Updated: 2026-10-27
Chapter: CHAPTER THREE: The LockLena POVThe knock is two knuckles, evenly spaced. Gavin's knock.I don't move. I'm sitting on the carpet with the felt moons laid out in front of me in a row,and the stuffed rabbit in my lap, and I count the seconds. At nine, the handle turns andstops against the lock."Lena."I say nothing."Open the door, or I use the key."I listen to his breathing through the wood. Then I get up, slide the lock back, and walk tothe window so I'm not near him when it opens.He comes in and shuts it behind him. He's changed the shirt again. There's a small papercup in his hand from the hospital cafeteria, and he looks at it as if he forgot he wascarrying it and sets it on the dresser."I thought we could talk like adults," he says."Go ahead." "What are you so upset about?"I turn around."I mean it." He spreads his hands. "I've been gone three weeks. I came home, and I gotthe pack through a border crisis. Eleven rogues. Nobody on our side dead. And I walk upmy own driveway, and my wife shov
Last Updated: 2026-10-27
Chapter: CHAPTER TWO: The NurseryLena POVI sit on the edge of the bed with my phone in both hands and wait for it to light up.9:12. I type: Please come back. I need to tell you something important. I look at it, deleteimportant, and send it.Delivered.I watch the word until the screen dims. I tap it awake. Still delivered. Not read.I call. It rings five times and goes to his voicemail, his own voice telling me to leave amessage. I hang up before the beep. I call again at 9:40. Again at 10:15. The third time itdoesn't ring at all, just goes straight through.Downstairs, the house is loud. Doors, footsteps, a man's laugh, a woman telling someoneto mind the stairs. At eleven someone pops a bottle. A cheer follows it, short and ragged,and then a lot of voices saying the same word. Heir. Heir. A glass breaks and they laugh atthat too.I take off the heels I forgot I was wearing. My feet are swollen and red where the strapswere. Our door is open. Nobody closed it after he walked out with her, and I haven't gotte
Last Updated: 2026-10-27
Chapter: CHAPTER ONE : The Green DressLena POVThe oven timer goes off and I nearly drop the tray.Steak with garlic butter, the way he likes it. Rosemary potatoes. Salmon, in case he issick of red meat after three weeks of field rations. I have been in this kitchen since sixthis morning, and the counter looks like I'm feeding the whole pack. I'm feeding oneman.My phone buzzes against the marble. It's Joel from the north gate.Convoy just passed the checkpoint. Twenty minutes.I wipe my hands on a towel and read it again, then a third time. Twenty minutes. I'vebeen counting days for twenty-three.The dress hangs on the pantry door where I put it last night so I wouldn't change mymind. Dark green, long sleeves, square neckline. On our second anniversary, Gavin stoodin front of a shop window downtown and said, "That one. It's the color of your eyes." Ihad never owned anything that color before him. I've worn it on every birthday of hissince.I take it into the downstairs bathroom and change fast. The zipper sticks
Last Updated: 2026-10-27
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