**Chapter 9** **The Moonstone**

My father stood in the kitchen doorway with the letter in his hand, looking at me like I was a sack of gold he had just found in the road.

"Another daughter of my house," he said slowly. "Well, well."

I was still on the floor where he had knocked me down. My cheek was throbbing. My mother was kneeling beside me with her hands on my shoulders.

"Father," I whispered. "What does it mean?"

"It means," he said, "that for once in your useless life, you will be good for something."

Behind him, Vivienne came into the doorway. Her face had gone pale when she heard the letter. I saw it. For one second, she looked afraid. Then I watched her think. I watched the fear go out of her eyes and something cold and clever come into them.

And then she smiled.

"Garrick, darling," she said, putting her hand on his arm. "This is wonderful news."

"It is?" My father looked surprised. Even he could see that she should be angry. Her own daughter had been passed over as the bride.

"Of course it is. Selene is his mate. A mate is worth more than any wife. Everyone knows that." Her eyes slid down to me on the floor. "And the Alpha needs a wife on paper to keep his seat. Who better than a girl with no wolf? She can't get in Selene's way. She can't fight. She can't even shift." She laughed softly. "Blackfang will have a Luna and a servant, and both of them will come from our house. Think of the honor."

My father's chest puffed up. "Yes. Yes, the honor."

I understood then. Vivienne was not giving me away. She was putting me on a rope. If I was in Blackfang, Selene could watch me every day. And Vivienne still had the one thing in the world I would do anything to protect.

She was standing right beside me, holding my shoulders.

"I won't go," I said.

The kitchen went quiet.

I don't know where the words came from. I had never said no to my father in my whole life. But the thought of living in that man's house, sleeping under his roof, passing him in the hallway every day while my sister wore my coat and told my story…

He would find out. Sooner or later, he would smell me. And then what? Would the Butcher of Nine Packs thank me for hiding? Or would he do to me what they said he did to everyone who lied to him?

"I won't go," I said again, louder.

My father's face went red. He took a step toward me, and my mother pulled me back against her.

But Vivienne put her hand on his chest. "Let me talk to her, darling. Go and pour yourself a drink. You've had a long day."

My father looked at me for a long moment. Then he grunted and turned away. His heavy steps went down the hall.

Vivienne came into the kitchen and closed the door behind her. She looked at my mother.

"Get up, Nora."

My mother stood up slowly. She kept her eyes on the floor.

Vivienne walked over to her. She was taller than my mother by a whole head, and she looked down at her the way you look at a stain on a rug. Then she reached out and touched my mother's hair, the silver streaks, very gently.

"Do you remember the punishment cells, Nora?" she asked softly. "Under the old barn?"

My mother didn't answer. But her hands started to shake.

"You were down there for two weeks, the winter Mira turned five. Do you remember why?"

"I remember," my mother whispered.

"You stole a blanket for your daughter. One blanket. Because she was cold." Vivienne smiled. "It's very cold down there in winter. Wet, too. Some servants don't come out."

"Stop it," I said. My voice was shaking. "Stop it. Leave her alone."

Vivienne turned to me.

"Here is how it will go, Mira. You will marry the Alpha. You will smile and be quiet and grateful. You will never say one word about the forest to anyone. Not to him, not to his Beta, not to the walls. And if I ever hear that you have opened your mouth…" She looked back at my mother. "Then Nora goes down to the cells, and she does not come up again."

I looked at my mother. My mother looked at the floor.

"Do you understand?" Vivienne asked.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to grab the knife from the table and…

But I was nineteen years old and I had no wolf, and the only person in the world who loved me was standing there shaking.

"I understand," I said.

"Good girl." Vivienne turned and opened the door. "Get some sleep. You look terrible. A bride should look her best."

She walked out.

My mother didn't move for a long time. Then she sat down hard on the stool and put her face in her hands.

---

She came to my room that night, very late, when the whole house was asleep.

I wasn't asleep. I was sitting on my bed in the dark, staring at the window, with my knees pulled up to my chest. My door wasn't locked anymore. There was no reason to lock it now. Where would I run?

The door opened without a sound, and my mother slipped inside. She sat down beside me on the bed. For a while, neither of us said anything.

"I'm sorry, Mama," I whispered at last. "This is all my fault. If I hadn't gone to the spring…"

"Hush." She took my hand. "Don't ever say that. None of this is your fault. None of it. Not one thing that has happened to you in your whole life has been your fault."

She reached into the pocket of her apron and took something out. She held it out to me on her open palm.

It was a necklace. A thin silver chain, old and a little dark with age. And hanging from it was a small round stone, about the size of my thumbnail. It was milky white, almost like a drop of frozen milk, and in the moonlight from the window it seemed to glow very softly from inside.

"What is it?"

"A moonstone." She put it in my hand. It was cold. Much colder than it should have been, like it had been sitting in snow. "It was my mother's. And her mother's before that."

"Your mother? You never talk about your mother."

"I know." She closed my fingers around the stone. "Mira, listen to me. You must wear this every day and every night. Never take it off. Not to wash. Not to sleep. Not for anyone. Do you understand?"

"But why?"

My mother looked at the door. Then she leaned close and spoke very softly, so softly I could barely hear her.

"There is something inside you. Something that has been asleep for a long time. I put it to sleep myself, the night you were born, to keep you safe. I sealed it away." She touched my neck, very lightly, just where the hidden mark was. "But that man's mark has cracked the seal. I felt it this morning. The thing inside you is waking up. And when it wakes, everyone will know."

My heart was beating fast. "Know what? Mama, what's inside me?"

"Not now. Please. I'm not ready. You're not ready." There were tears in her eyes. "This stone will hold the seal shut a little longer. It will hide your smell. It will quiet the mark. It won't last forever. But it might last long enough."

"Long enough for what?"

She didn't answer. She just took the necklace from my hand, opened the clasp, and put it around my neck. Her fingers were shaking.

The moment the cold stone touched my skin, something happened.

The pulse in my neck slowed down. Thump… thump… thump. Slower and slower, until it was so soft I could barely feel it. The heat I had been carrying inside me since the forest, that low warm burning under my skin, went quiet. Like a fire with water poured over it.

And deep inside me, in that big quiet house where something slept, I felt a door swing slowly shut.

I gasped.

"Do you feel it?" my mother whispered.

"Yes."

She leaned in and breathed in, close to my neck. When she pulled back, her face was a strange mix of relief and sadness.

"Your smell is gone," she said. "You smell like soap and bread. Like a human girl."

"I've always been a human girl."

My mother looked at me for a long time. Then she kissed my forehead, the way she used to when I was little.

"No, my darling," she said. "You never were."

And before I could say another word, she slipped out of my room and closed the door.

---

The Blackfang cars came back at dawn.

Not in seven days. Not in six. The very next morning, before the sun was even all the way up. I woke to the sound of the border horn blowing, and then howling, and then the whole house running and shouting again.

I went to my window. There they were, the long black cars, coming fast down the road with the black wolves running beside them.

"He's early," I whispered. "Why is he early?"

Nobody had an answer.

Vivienne burst into my room still in her nightgown, with her hair wild. She threw a dress at me. It was one of Selene's old ones, pale blue, too long for me.

"Put that on. Brush your hair. Hurry!"

I dressed with shaking hands. I tucked the moonstone under the collar of the dress, where it lay cold against my skin. I brushed my long dark hair down over my neck. When I looked in the cracked mirror, a tired girl with a bruise on her cheek looked back at me.

Not a bride. Not a Luna. Just a kitchen girl in her sister's old dress.

From the window, I saw him get out of the first car.

He didn't go to the front door. He didn't wait for my father to greet him. He walked straight around the side of the house, fast, with Rowan hurrying behind him. Straight to the kitchen door.

My heart stopped.

I ran to the top of the back stairs and listened.

"Open it," I heard him say. His voice came up from the kitchen, cold and hard. "That door in the floor. Open it."

"Alpha, it's only the cellar," my father said. He sounded scared. "Potatoes and onions…"

"Open it."

I heard the flour sack drag. I heard the cellar door bang open. I heard boots on the ladder going down.

I held on to the stair rail with both hands and didn't breathe.

For a long time there was nothing. Then the boots came back up. Slowly.

"Nothing," Rowan said quietly. "Alpha, there's nothing down there. Just pepper smoke and rats."

Kael didn't answer.

I knew why there was nothing. My mother had been down there in the night with a bucket and a brush. She had scrubbed the barrel and the shelves and the walls. She had swept the dust where I had knelt. She had burned more pepper. She had thought of everything.

"Alpha," my father said nervously, "if you came for the bride, she's ready. She's upstairs. I'll bring her down."

A long silence.

"Bring her," Kael said at last. His voice sounded tired. Tired and angry, like a man who has lost something twice.

---

I walked out of my father's house with a small bag in my hand. Inside it was everything I owned in the world. Two dresses. An old hairbrush. A cracked cup my mother gave me when I was ten.

The whole pack had come out again to watch. They stood on both sides of the path and whispered as I passed. I heard them.

*The wolfless one.*

*Poor thing. The Butcher will eat her alive.*

*Better her than one of ours.*

I kept my head down. I looked at my feet. One step. Then another.

My mother wasn't there. She wasn't allowed to be. Servants didn't come to the front of the house. But I felt her somewhere behind me, watching from a window, and that was the only thing that kept my legs moving.

At the end of the path, beside the big black car, he was waiting.

I didn't look up. I couldn't. I stopped in front of him and stared at his boots. Big black boots, with dust from our road on them.

The smell of him came to me on the morning air. Cedar smoke and rain on hot stone. But this time it didn't knock me over. The moonstone was cold against my chest, and the heat in my body stayed quiet. My heart was pounding, but only with fear.

*Thank you, Mama,* I thought.

"Look at me," he said.

I didn't move.

"Look at me," he said again. Quieter.

Slowly, I lifted my head.

And for the first time, I looked straight into the face of the man I had given myself to in the dark.

He was so close. Closer than in the square. I could see the thin white scar through his eyebrow. I could see small lines at the corners of his eyes, lines from not sleeping. I could see the gold of his eyes, bright and burning. They moved over my face slowly. My hair. My bruised cheek. My mouth.

He leaned down, just a little, and breathed in.

I stood as still as a stone.

He stayed like that for a long time. I could feel his breath near my hair. Then he straightened up, and he frowned. His eyes stayed on my face, and something moved behind them. Something confused, like a man trying to remember a word that is right on the tip of his tongue.

"What is your name?" he asked.

"Mira," I whispered.

"Mira." He said it slowly, like he was tasting it. His eyes didn't leave my face. Then his voice dropped low, so low that only I could hear.

"Have we met before?"