Chapter five

CHAPTER FIVE

HAZEL'S POV

Jenna parked by the kitchen entrance, and a young wolf in a navy blazer came down the steps to meet us. He stopped short when he saw me.

"Luna Blackwood?"

He'd been at Nightfall last night. He was Caleb Price, the old Alpha's grandson.

I smiled and signed, "Hello."

He bowed his head. It was a real bow, the kind a wolf gives a Luna, and I didn't know what to do with it. Nobody in my own pack had ever bowed to me.

"My grandfather will be glad you came," he said. "He knew your father."

Then someone came out of the house behind him.

Sienna stood on the top step in a long white dress, and her face went from smug to murderous in one breath.

"You've got to be joking. Are you following me now?"

I found out later she'd spent a week begging Julian to bring her. Old Alpha Price didn't know my face. If Julian walked in with Sienna and didn't correct anyone, three packs would go home thinking she was the Blackwood Luna. She'd been looking forward to it.

Then the mute stray showed up with the cake.

I lifted my hands. Jenna got there first.

"Following you? You're the one who keeps turning up everywhere like a tick." She rounded on Caleb. "It's your grandfather's eightieth. Do you know who she is? She's the girl the Blackwood Alpha won't stop sneaking off to see. You brought her onto Accord land on the old man's birthday?"

Caleb rubbed his neck. "Julian brought her."

Sienna smiled.

Jenna took my arm. "We're leaving. They can eat a supermarket sheet cake."

I tugged her hand. "Jenna, it's fine. The cake's finished. Let's just bring it in."

"It's fine," Jenna said. "Is that the only sign you know?"

"That's right," Sienna called. "Drop off your little cake and go. Do you know what the old wolves say? A Wren at a birthday is bad luck. Everything the Wrens touch burns. Ask her family."

Jenna's hand moved so fast I didn't see it.

The slap snapped Sienna's head sideways. Four thin red lines opened across her cheek where Jenna's nails had already started to turn.

Sienna screamed. Her eyes flared amber and her lips pulled back from her teeth. "You clawed me! You're dead, Hale. I'm calling Julian, and he'll strip your pack's hunting rights to the bone."

"Call him!" Jenna snarled. Her voice had gone rough, and her canines were showing. "And if he doesn't, I'll do it again every time I see you."

Sienna whipped out her phone.

My stomach dropped. If Julian came, it wouldn't just be Jenna. It would be the whole Hale pack paying for this, and it would be my fault.

I grabbed Sienna's wrist.

"Please," I signed with my other hand. "I'm sorry. I'll apologize for her. Please don't call him."

"Let go. I can't understand your flapping."

She could. She'd taken sign lessons two years ago to get closer to Julian through me.

"Please. I'll do anything..."

"I said let go!"

She shoved me with a she-wolf's strength.

I flew backward and landed hard on the flagstones. A pain I'd never felt before ripped through my belly, so deep it turned the whole world white.

Something warm spread between my legs and soaked into my dress.

Jenna dropped to her knees beside me. She breathed in, and all the color left her face. She'd caught something under the blood, something that no one had been able to smell on me before.

"Hazel," she whispered. "Oh, God. Hazel, there's a pup."

***

I don't remember the ride to the pack infirmary at Weston.

I remember waking up in a narrow white room with Jenna holding my hand. Her eyes were swollen, and she was still in her flour-dusted apron.

"The healer says you were six weeks along," she said. "Nobody could smell it, Hazel. Not even you. You're wolfless, so your scent is faint anyway, and Margaret's moonseed was all over you. It buried everything." Her voice cracked. "They couldn't save it. I'm so sorry."

I put my hand flat on my stomach.

Six weeks. I'd missed a cycle and blamed stress. I'd been sick every morning and blamed the tonic. All that time there'd been someone with me.

I looked past Jenna to the door.

"He came," Jenna said quietly. "Julian came. Sienna had twisted her ankle when she went down after me, and she started crying the moment she saw him. He picked her up and carried her down the hall to get it set. I chased him. I told him his Luna was bleeding on a table. I asked if he was even a wolf."

She swallowed. "He didn't turn around. He said, I'm not a healer. And he kept walking."

I closed my eyes.

Later, when Jenna had gone to get me clothes, I heard wheels in the doorway. It was Sienna in a wheelchair, with her ankle in a brace and four scabbed lines across her cheek.

"He's out getting me food," she said. "So I'll be quick. He never wanted a pup with you. Whatever you did to get one, it's gone now, and that's the moon's way of telling you it should never have happened. If you tell him, you're just one more burden on his back. Why give him two?"

I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood.

She'd shoved a pregnant Luna on Accord land. If Julian found out, even he might not be able to protect her from the Council.

And I didn't want Julian's pity. His pity was a blade he didn't know he was holding.

I lifted my hands. "I won't tell him."

She smiled and rolled out.

I lay there with my hand on my stomach and watched the light go gold through the window. I'm sorry, I told the pup. I didn't know you were here.

Somewhere between the first tear and the last, I made a decision.