Smile, Luna

Jessi leaned against the doorframe like she’d been posed there.

Even at one in the morning, she was flawless. Honey-blond waves spilled over the shoulders of a cream silk robe, and her lips were glossed pink, as if she’d taken the time to put on makeup before rushing to the infirmary. Her eyes were wide and soft with concern.

She’d always been beautiful. That was the first thing everyone noticed about Jessi.

It took me a whole lifetime to notice the second.

“Kira, sweetheart.” She swept into the room on a cloud of vanilla perfume and wrapped her arms around me before I could step back. “I came as soon as I heard. You must be exhausted.”

Her hug was warm. Her body was soft.

Every nerve I had turned to ice.

I never touched her. No one believed me.

I didn’t hug her back. After a moment, she drew away, still holding my arms, studying my face with those big, worried eyes.

“Is everything all right?” she murmured. “You left the packhouse in the middle of your mating night. Zion didn’t...” She bit her lip and lowered her voice, just loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. “He can be so intense. He didn’t upset you, did he?”

Behind her, Dakota shifted. The two nurses hovering in the hallway leaned closer.

In my last life, I would have flushed bright red. I would have stammered something about being fine and fled with my eyes on the floor, and Jessi would have walked away with exactly what she wanted: everyone in Dark Moon believing my marriage was a disaster, and believing she knew Zion better than his own wife did.

I smiled.

“That’s so sweet of you, Luna,” I said warmly. “But I’m a little confused.”

She blinked. “Confused?”

“Why is the Luna of Dark Moon so worried about how Silver Lake’s Alpha spends his wedding night?”

Silence.

It spread through the room and out into the hall, thick enough to choke on. One of the nurses made a small strangled sound and quickly covered it with a cough.

Jessi’s smile didn’t move. But her eyes did. For one heartbeat, something cold and sharp flashed behind all that softness, and her fingers tightened on my arms hard enough to sting.

Then she laughed, light and breathless. “Oh, Kira. I only meant, as your sister…”

“Of course,” I said. “That’s what I thought.”

I gently pried her hands off me and looked past her shoulder.

Dakota stood very still. He wasn’t looking at me anymore. He was looking at his mate, a small crease forming between his brows.

It was the tiniest crack. But it was there.

“You should take her home, Dakota,” I said. “She’s shaking. It’s cold in here.”

I turned my back on both of them and followed my mother’s gurney out the door.

By the time the car crossed into Silver Lake territory, I was burning up.

It started as a flush in my cheeks, which I blamed on adrenaline. Then sweat beaded along my hairline, and my coat was suddenly far too heavy. I shrugged it off and pressed my forehead to the cold window as the dark trees blurred past.

My bones ached. Not the dull ache of exhaustion. Something deeper, as if every one of them were being slowly pulled out of place.

Silver, I thought wildly. Did they get to me already?

But there was no wound. Nothing burned. It just hurt.

The Silver Lake clinic was bright and warm, nothing like the cold, gray hallway at Dark Moon. The healers settled Mom into a private room with a window that faced the lake, and an older woman with kind eyes began drawing blood before the IV had even been changed.

“We’ll find out what’s in her system, Luna,” she promised. “Whatever it is.”

I sank into the chair beside Mom’s bed and took her hand.

The room tilted.

I gripped the armrest. My heartbeat was too fast, pounding in my ears, my teeth, the tips of my fingers. Heat rolled through me in waves, each one stronger than the last.

Then, beneath the pounding, I heard something else.

A second heartbeat.

Not Mom’s. Not anyone’s in the room.

It was inside me.

Slow and heavy, like something enormous stirring after a very long sleep.

My breath came short. I pressed a hand to my chest. “What is...”

The door opened behind me.

I didn’t have to turn around. His scent filled the room at once: cedar and cold rain. But it was different now. Before, it had only been a scent. Now it hit me like a wave, warm and dizzying, sinking straight through my skin into my bones. My whole body went taut, every nerve straining toward the door.

“Kira,” Zion said. “The healers said you…”

The thing inside me opened its eyes.

I felt it happen. A presence uncurling in the back of my mind, fierce and wild and awake, turning its full attention to the man in the doorway.

And then a voice that wasn’t mine whispered through my skull, low and certain.

Mate.