Chapter 9

Noa’s POV

“By the law of this pack,” Asher said, “I name Noa Bennett Luna of Ironwood.”

The words rolled across the great hall and hit the stone walls and came back to me twice.

I heard them through fur. Through ears that were taller than mine had ever been and a heart that beat in a chest as wide as a barrel. I was standing on four feet. I could smell every wolf in the room, the wax of the candles, the fear on the guards I had thrown, and the clean pine of the man in front of me.

He didn’t look away from my eyes.

“Luna,” someone whispered.

“He took her back.”

“He rejected her three days ago.”

“Quiet,” said Gideon Stone from his bed, and the whole hall went still.

Asher lifted one hand. It was shaking. I could see the tremor in his fingers from where I stood.

“I’m not finished,” he said.

Reuben Vane’s thin smile froze.

“By the law of this pack, she is Luna. That protects her from the council. That is all it does.” Asher’s voice dropped. “By my own word, I am not her mate. Not tonight. Not until she chooses me. If she ever does.”

A sound went through the crowd like a wave hitting rocks.

Inside me, a new voice laughed. It was warm and low and a little wild, like a bonfire talking.

He’s clever, the voice said. I like him.

I nearly sat down on the stone. Who are you?

Ora, she said, as if I should have known. I’ve been waiting a very long time for you to open the door, Noa.

My wolf. My wolf had a name. My wolf had a sense of humor.

“Well,” said Reuben Vane. He lifted his hands and let them fall. “A Luna in name. A mate in nothing. How very modern.”

“It’s legal,” said Gideon.

“Oh, it’s legal, old friend.” Vane turned to the council, then to the crowd. His voice was soft and reasonable, the voice of a man reading a recipe. “But the Charter has three parts, not one. A wolf. A rank. A fight. Miss Bennett now has a wolf, and our Alpha has kindly given her a rank. So I call the third part.”

My fur rose along my spine.

“Section nine,” Vane said. “A new Luna may be challenged once, within one cycle of the moon, by any she-wolf of rank in the Northwest. The challenge will be heard on the night of the next full moon. Thirty days from tonight.”

“You don’t get to choose the date,” Asher said.

“I don’t. The moon does.” Vane spread his hands. “I simply read the calendar.”

Gideon’s jaw worked. He looked at the old faces along the council table, one by one. None of them would meet his eyes.

“Thirty days,” Gideon said at last, heavily. “So be it.”

That’s not a lot of days, Ora said.

I know.

You can’t fight.

I know that too.

Then why are you wagging our tail?

I looked behind me. She was right. My tail, which I had owned for about four minutes, was moving slowly back and forth. I made it stop. Several wolves in the front row saw me do it and looked very hard at the floor.

“Change back, Miss Bennett,” Vane said kindly. “Unless you intend to rule from all fours.”

I had no idea how.

Breathe out, said Ora. Think of your hands. Think of flour.

I thought of flour. I thought of the kitchen at home at two in the morning, the dough under my palms, the yellow light over the stove. Heat rolled through me from my tail to my ears, and the hall tipped sideways, and the stone came up very fast under my knees.

Then I was kneeling on the cold floor.

In my skin.

Only my skin.

The gray dress was a shredded heap by the Elder’s bed, and my apron was a white rag hanging off a bench, and four hundred wolves were about to see every soft inch of me at once.

I didn’t even have time to gasp.

A black coat hit my shoulders. It was heavy and warm and it smelled like pine and cold rain and cinnamon, and it fell around me all the way to the floor. Two hands pulled it closed under my chin. They stayed there a moment, knuckles brushing my throat.

Asher was crouched in front of me. He had put himself between me and the hall. He was looking only at my face.

“I didn’t look,” he said, very low.

“Everyone else did.”

“Everyone else is looking at the floor now.” He didn’t turn his head. He raised his voice just a little. “Aren’t they.”

Four hundred heads bowed a fraction lower.

I clutched the coat. My hands were shaking. My whole body was shaking. I felt huge and naked and new, and under all of it Ora was humming happily, as if we had just won a prize at the fair.

“I didn’t say yes,” I whispered.

“I know.”

“You named me Luna without asking me. Again.”

His jaw tightened. “If I had asked, they’d have taken you in the time it took you to answer.”

“That’s what you said last time.”

“It was true last time too.”

I stared at him. He stared back. A muscle moved in his cheek. Then, slowly, he took his hands away from the collar of the coat and rested them on his own knees, palms up, as though he were showing me there was nothing in them.

“Then I’m asking now,” he said. “Late. I know it’s late. Will you take the title, Noa? Only the title. It keeps you out of a cell. It doesn’t make you mine.”

The hall was so quiet that I could hear a candle hissing.

“I’ll take the title,” I said. “Not the man.”

A look crossed his face then. It was not quite pain and not quite relief, and it passed so fast that if I hadn’t been eighteen inches away I would have missed it.

“That’s fair,” he said.

“I know it is.”

He stood. He held out his hand. I looked at it for a long second, and then I took it, and he pulled me to my feet. The coat swung around my ankles. My legs held.

Gideon Stone began to clap.

It was a slow, dry sound, an old man’s palms coming together. Then Micah joined him, by the wall, grinning like a fool. Then the old woman who had knelt first. Then a child on someone’s shoulders. It spread through the hall the way the kneeling had spread, until the stone roared with it.

Reuben Vane did not clap.

He watched me with his mild blue eyes, and he smiled, and he made a small note in a leather book with a silver pen.

~

They gave me a back corridor to escape down.

Micah walked in front. Asher walked behind. Neither of them spoke. The coat dragged on the stone, and my bare feet were freezing, and I could feel Asher’s eyes on the back of my neck as clearly as a hand.

At the foot of the east stairs, Micah stopped.

“I’ll get her some clothes,” he said. “Real ones. Not a coat that cost more than my truck.”

“Go,” said Asher.

Micah went. That left the two of us at the bottom of the stairs, under a single lamp, with the noise of the hall still rumbling somewhere behind the walls.

“Thirty days,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Who will they send?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“You’re lying.”

He looked at me sharply. “I’m not.”

“You’re not lying about who.” I pulled the coat tighter. “You’re hiding a part of it. Your ears go pink.”

“My ears do not go pink.”

“They’re pink right now.”

He put a hand up to his ear before he could stop himself. Then he lowered it slowly, and his eyes narrowed, and for the first time since the lake I saw the corner of his mouth twitch.

“That was a trick,” he said.

“It worked.”

“Noa.”

“What aren’t you telling me, Asher?”

He opened his mouth. Then he shut it. Then he said, “Tonight you need to sleep. Tomorrow I’ll tell you everything I know about the challenge. Everything. In writing, if you want it.”

“I want it in writing.”

“Then you’ll have it in writing.”

Behind me, soft footsteps came down the stairs. I turned.

It wasn’t Micah. It was Leah Vane, in her plain gray dress, with her braid pinned up and her face as white as milk. She had a bundle of clothes in her arms, a sweater and leggings and a pair of wool socks.

“Micah sent me,” she said. “He said a woman should bring these.”

“Thank you.”

She put them into my hands. Her fingers were cold. She didn’t let go of the bundle right away.

“Leah?” said Asher.

She glanced at him, then back at me, and she leaned in until her mouth was almost at my ear.

“My father didn’t wait for the full moon to choose,” she whispered. “He made the call before the ceremony even started. While you were still kneeling by the bed.”

“Who?”

“My cousin. Kezia Vane.” Leah’s voice shook. “She runs with the Clearwater pack in Idaho. She’s never been beaten. She’s fought in the ring four times, Noa.”

“And?”

Leah closed her eyes.

“And only two of the wolves she fought ever walked out again.”