THE BARREN LUNA

POV: Elva

The war horns sounded from the south tower while I was still scraping the bottom of the stew pot, and the pregnancy test in my apron pocket felt like a live coal I'd been warned not to drop.

"That's him," Marta said. She had cooked for the Alpha House for thirty years, and she took the spoon out of my hand the way she'd once taken knives from toddlers. "You've been scraping that same spot for ten minutes, girl."

"I haven't been counting."

"I have." She tasted the stew and clicked her tongue. "Too much salt. He'll think you're nervous."

"I am nervous."

"Then add honey. A man forgives a bad stew faster than a bad face."

I laughed, and the sound startled us both, because neither of us had heard it in months. Marta looked at me for a long moment, then at the hand I kept pressed flat against my apron.

"You've told no one," she said.

"Four weeks. I read the healer's packet four times this morning, Marta, as if the words might change their minds."

"Five years you've prayed for this."

"Don't say it out loud. The Moon Goddess might hear and think better of it."

"She isn't that petty."

"You haven't seen how she treats me." I smoothed the green dress, the one Eriq once said made my eyes look like river water. I had believed him for five years, and I still couldn't tell whether that said more about him or about me. "I'm not going to hand him the box, either. I'm going to put my hands on his face and tell him to his eyes."

"And the elders?"

"The elders can choke on it."

Marta snorted, pressed a jar of honey into my palm, and pushed me toward the door. "Go. Before I lose my nerve for you."

The courtyard was already crowded when I reached it. Warriors streamed through the gate with dust on their shoulders and the dull, wrung-out look of men who'd won something that cost too much. I held the little green box against my ribs and searched for him over their heads.

"Luna." Elder Brannoch stepped into my path with his hands folded, his usual expression of mild disappointment already in place. "Gate duty is for the Alpha's family. You might be more comfortable inside."

"I'm exactly where I belong, Elder."

"Then you'll want to prepare yourself."

"For what?"

He didn't answer, and that was how I knew. A man like Brannoch never wasted a warning on someone he didn't expect to need one.

Eriq came through the gate last, tall and tired and alive, with a fresh cut along his jaw. My lungs remembered how to work. I took one step toward him, already rehearsing the words, and that was when I saw her.

Saskia Morrow walked at his side with her arm looped through his. Behind them, Eriq's half-brother Kieran kept his bandaged hand tucked against his chest and his eyes on the cobblestones, and when I called his name he didn't look up. Saskia's free hand rested on her stomach, and beneath her battle vest the curve was impossible to mistake.

"Eriq," I said. It came out as a breath.

"Elva." He crossed the courtyard slowly, in the voice he used on frightened horses. "Before you hear it from anyone else, I need you to listen."

"Listen to what?"

"Saskia is carrying my pup."

The box left my fingers. It hit the stones, and the ribbon I'd tied twice landed in a puddle by the well.

The whispers started before I understood them. Five years. No heir. The Luna is barren. Saskia would make a far better Luna. The elders stepped forward to thump Eriq's back, and every congratulation had a small blade tucked inside it.

"A hen that cannot lay," Brannoch said, loud enough to carry. "The Goddess has finally shown us mercy."

"That's enough." Eriq's voice cracked over the courtyard like a whip. "She is still your Luna."

"Is she?" Saskia said softly, and her lower lip trembled as though she were the injured one. "I never wanted to hurt anyone, Luna. I hope you can believe that."

Her eyes met mine for one breath, and there was no tremble in them at all. They were quick and cool and calculating, the look of someone measuring a fence she planned to climb. Then it was gone, and she leaned into Eriq's arm.

"How?" I asked him. My voice had gone strange and thin. "When?"

"Not here."

"You brought her through the gate on your arm, Eriq. Here is exactly where."

"I said not here." He reached for me, his hand open, his face softening into the look I'd built five years on, a house on a floodplain, certain the water would stay away. "Come inside. Let me explain."

I shoved him with both hands.

He stumbled a single step, and the courtyard gasped as if I'd struck a king. I snatched the box out of the puddle and ran, my shoes slipping on the marble stairs and the banister burning my palm, and I didn't stop until I reached our bedroom and slammed the door hard enough to rattle the frame.

In the mirror, a flushed, wild-eyed stranger stared back at me with river-colored eyes. I sat on the floor with my back against the wall, took the soaked ribbon between my fingers, and pulled it loose.

Two pink lines, pale as petals, were still there. The Goddess had finally answered me on the one day she could have done it as a cruelty.

Out in the corridor, footsteps slowed near my door. A woman's voice drifted through the crack beneath it, soft and pleased with itself.

"Did you see her face, Father? Good. Now she has nothing left to hold on to."

A man's low laugh answered her.

"Not yet," he said. "We still need the council's vote."