Chapter 11 The Thing Wearing Her Face

Chapter 11: The Thing Wearing Her Face

Odessa

They let me stand at the front.

I don't know who decided that. Maybe it was the way my eyes kept glowing, or the way the air hummed whenever I got scared. But when the Sorrel pack gathered in the courtyard, every wolf in the territory with a drop of moon in their blood stepped aside without being asked, and I ended up in the middle of the gravel with Evan's hand in mine and my heart trying to climb out of my throat.

"You don't have to do this," he said quietly.

"We've talked about this."

"I know. I'm saying it anyway."

"Evan." I didn't look away from the gates. "Say it one more time and I'll bite you."

"You already did."

My face went hot. Somewhere behind us, Josh coughed like he'd swallowed a bee. I decided to live with the shame later.

The gates opened.

Draven Hale walked in first, silver hair loose, white flag in one hand, smiling like a man at a wedding. Behind him came his pack, row after row, and at the very back, between two Alphas, a small figure in grey robes walked with her head bowed.

The Priestess.

She looked exactly like the portrait in our great hall. Same white braid, same crooked shoulders, same silver moon pinned at her collar. A murmur went through the courtyard, and a few of the older wolves actually dropped to one knee.

But my wolf wasn't kneeling. My wolf was pressed against the inside of my ribs, snarling.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

"Alpha Sorrel," Draven called, spreading his arms. "I come in peace. I bring a gift, and a truth. Let the Goddess's voice speak for me."

The Priestess raised her head.

Her eyes were milk-white, and they were pointed straight at me.

"Daughter of the moon," she said, and her voice was soft and cracked and kind, so kind that for one terrible second I wanted to run to her. "Child. You've grown so tall."

"Don't," Evan murmured. "She's pulling on the bond. Can you feel it?"

I could. A thin, silver thread, curling out of the old woman's chest and across the courtyard, reaching for the place between my ribs where Evan's mark burned. It felt like a hand sliding around my heart.

"Come closer, little one," the Priestess whispered. "Let me bless what the Goddess has joined."

I took one step. Evan's fingers tightened. I took another. Everyone in that courtyard was holding their breath, and somewhere far away I could hear my mother's voice calling my name.

Then I stopped. And I looked.

Not with my eyes. With the other thing, the thing that had opened in me last night, the thing that heard kitchens from the second floor. The Priestess's face went soft and blurry, and underneath it I saw what was really standing there.

It was a shape stitched together out of silver thread, thousands of strands pulled tight around an empty frame. There was no heartbeat. No breath. Just a hollow thing with a dead woman's face painted over it, and every thread ran out of its chest and straight into Draven Hale's hand.

"Oh," I said softly. "Oh, you monster."

Draven's smile faltered.

"That's not her," I said, and my voice rolled across the courtyard in that layered, doubled tone again. Every wolf there flinched. "That's a puppet. He took her body and he wove something into it, something that can drink a bond from the outside."

"Child," the Priestess said, and the kindness slid off her voice like water. "You do not understand what you are saying."

"I understand perfectly." I raised my free hand. "You're built from the threads of every Lunara that came before me. He didn't just kill them. He kept them."

"Odessa," Evan breathed.

The silver strands were trembling now. Draven's face had gone from amused to something raw and ugly, and he yanked on the threads, hard. The Priestess's mouth opened, and the voice that came out was a chorus, a dozen women screaming at once.

GIVE IT BACK.

The gravel shook. Half the pack stumbled. I felt the pull on my chest turn into a hook, and my knees went weak, and Evan caught me before I fell.

"I've got you," he said in my ear. "Don't fight it. Use it. It's yours."

"I can't..."

"You're the Lunara. It's yours."

I closed my eyes, and I thought of every girl whose thread was in that thing. Four hundred years of women who never got to choose. Who were hunted and cut and kept in a box.

Then I reached for the silver and pulled.

Evan

I have fought in two border wars, and I have never seen anything like it.

Odessa stood in the middle of the courtyard with her arm outstretched and her hair floating like she was underwater. Silver light poured out of her chest, out of the mark on her neck, out of her eyes. The Priestess's body began to unravel. Strand by strand, the threads pulled loose from Draven's hand and turned and rushed toward her, wrapping her wrists, her shoulders, her throat, and she took every one of them without a sound.

Draven screamed. I think he'd never lost control of anything in his life.

"Stop her! Stop her!"

Twelve Alphas lunged.

They didn't make it three steps. My father roared, and the Sorrel pack answered, and in a heartbeat the courtyard was a wall of teeth and fur. Josh shifted in midair, a huge brown wolf slamming into the first Northern Alpha so hard I heard bone crack. John was beside him a second later. Mia, God help me, Mia had a sword.

I didn't go to them.

I stayed where I was, at Odessa's back, one hand flat between her shoulder blades, and I gave her everything I had. Every ounce of strength the sealed bond had returned to me, I pushed it into her, and I felt her take it. It felt like holding a lightning rod in a storm.

The last thread snapped free.

The Priestess's body folded to the ground, empty and light as paper. Her face was her own again, old and lined and finally at peace. Odessa sagged against me. The silver glow faded to a faint shimmer under her skin.

The courtyard went silent.

Draven stood alone in the center of the fighting, his flag torn, his pack scattered. His fingers were burned black where the threads had been. He stared at Odessa, and I expected rage.

Instead, he began to laugh.

"You think that was the last of it?" he said hoarsely. "You pulled on one thread, girl. One. And you've just told the entire territory exactly where to find you."

"Evan," Odessa whispered, barely conscious. "I can hear them. Something's coming. A lot of somethings."

"I know."

"No." She gripped my arm. Her eyes were still silver, but they weren't looking at me. They were looking over Draven's shoulder, at the empty road beyond the gate. "Not wolves."

Draven's smile widened. He was bleeding from the mouth, and he didn't care.

"Ask your mother," he said softly, "what she traded for your life."

Then he stepped back into the shadow of the gate and was gone.

And from somewhere behind us, I heard Elaine Kade drop to her knees on the gravel and begin to sob.