Chapter six

CHAPTER SIX

HAZEL'S POV

Jenna drove me home the next afternoon. Julian never came to the infirmary. He didn't call or text, and he didn't send anyone.

She settled me in bed and sat on the edge of it. "Two weeks off, paid. If you need anything, call me. I'll be here in twenty minutes."

After her car pulled away, I went down to the study and took the leather book of pack law off Julian's shelf.

It took me an hour to find the page. Arthur had read it to me once when I was small, smiling, as if it were a fairy tale. A Luna who had been wronged by her Alpha could stand before the Moon Council and speak the rite of rejection. If she was mute, she could write it in her own blood instead. Once the rite was witnessed, the mating was broken. Everything that rested on it would break too.

I copied the words onto a sheet of heavy paper in my neatest hand. I left the bottom blank, where the blood would go.

I read it over twice. It was strange to see it written out in my own hand. For twenty years I'd thought the Accord was a chain around Julian's neck, and that I was the one tied to the end of it. It had never occurred to me that I might be the one holding it.

Then I folded it into the nightstand drawer and lay down.

The dream came, the same as always. There was the fire, and the door that wouldn't open, and the howling. A hand closed over mine in the middle of it, warm and steady.

"Hazel," a voice said. "It's all right. I've got you."

I knew that voice. I'd heard it once, a very long time ago. I tried to hold on to it and woke up alone.

The light outside had gone low and orange. I was sticky with sweat, so I took clean clothes into the bathroom and turned on the shower. I'd pulled my shirt halfway over my head when the door opened behind me.

Julian stood there in his suit.

His nostrils flared once. He was breathing me in, the way he always did when he came home, as if he were checking that I was still here. His eyes went to my bare back and darkened, and he crossed the room and pressed me against the tile.

His mouth came down on my throat, right over the place where a mark should have been. His teeth grazed it.

For one second, every nerve in my body went still. In five years he'd never once put his teeth there.

Then his hand slid under my shirt, and I remembered I'd had surgery yesterday.

I shoved him back with both hands.

I had never pushed him away before.

He stepped back. His eyes had gone gold at the edges. "What's wrong?"

"It's that time," I signed fast. "I don't feel well."

He breathed in, slowly. I knew what he'd smell. He'd smell blood, and the bleach the healers used, and moonseed, and very little of me. Wolves can't tell much from a wolfless body. He'd smell blood and assume the obvious.

He did. His mouth went flat and irritated, and he walked out.

By the time I came down, it was dark. Julian sat in our bedroom with my laptop on his knees. My heart stopped, but I'd written the rite by hand, and there was nothing on the screen.

I knelt in front of him. "What do you want for dinner?"

He closed the laptop. "Whatever you make."

I made three dishes and a soup. Standing at the stove for an hour made my belly cramp so badly I had to grip the counter. At the table I pressed my hand against my stomach under the tablecloth and took a few bites.

When he put down his fork, he said, "Hazel."

I looked up.

"You'll always be Luna. I'm not taking that from you." His voice was very even. "But you need to keep the Hale girl away from Sienna. She clawed a Beta's daughter on Price land."

The blood drained out of my face.

Sienna had shoved me with a she-wolf's strength, and I'd lost his pup on those same flagstones. He hadn't asked me one question about it. And he was asking me to protect her.

"Jenna didn't start it," I signed. "Sienna insulted my family. Ask Caleb Price. He heard every word."

It was the first time in my life I'd argued with him.

"If Jenna hadn't called her my mistress in front of three packs, Sienna would've kept her mouth shut."

So that was what he minded. He didn't mind that I'd been hurt. He minded that someone had shamed Sienna, because of me.

Something inside me snapped.

"If her name matters that much to you," I signed, so fast my fingers blurred, "then repudiate me. Go to the Council and do it. I'll say yes."

He came out of his chair so fast I didn't see him move.

His hand closed around both my wrists. I felt his nails go long and sharp and press into my skin. His eyes had gone fully gold, and a growl rolled out of his chest that shook the glasses on the table.

"Who put that in your head? Jenna? Her grandfather?"

I shook my head and tried to free my hands to answer. His grip only tightened. I felt the skin break.

He looked down. Four thin lines of blood were running down the inside of my wrist.

He let go as if I'd burned him. He stared at his own hand while the claws slid back into fingernails.

"It wasn't Jenna," I signed, shaking.

"Enough." His voice came out rough, half wolf. "I will never repudiate you. Do you hear me? Never."

"Why?"

He leaned down until his gold eyes were level with mine.

"Have you forgotten why I took you?"

I hadn't forgotten. The blood-debt, the Council, and the Accord. His seat.

I'd never been his mate. I was the price of his crown.