The Alpha’s Forsaken Luna

Hazel's POVThe great hall at Shadowpelt could seat four hundred wolves. On the night of the Harvest Moon Gathering it held closer to six, and every one of them knew exactly where I was standing.Not one of them looked at me.That is how a pack tells you it has made up its mind. There is no shouting. The noise simply learns to move around you, the way a river moves around a stone.I kept my hands folded low over the front of my dress. Mrs. Hale had let out the seams herself the night before, sitting on the edge of my bed with a mouthful of pins, and neither of us had said why. She could hold an entire conversation with one eyebrow. When she finished, she'd smoothed the hem flat and said, "There. Nobody sees anything they weren't invited to."In my pocket, against my hip, sat a cedar wolf no bigger than a walnut. I had bought it that afternoon from an old man at the market stalls outside the gates, who carved them from fallen branches and sold them for two coins to children and to women

Hazel's POVBlaine did not come to bed that night. That was not news.His side of the mattress was made up so tightly you could have bounced a coin off it, and it had been that way, more or less, for three years. When the pack needed him he slept in the study. When the pack didn't need him, he found something it did. I had stopped taking it personally sometime in the second year. Then I had started again, in secret, which is a more expensive way to do it.There had been one exception.It was three months ago, the last week of summer. A rogue raid on the eastern ridge had taken six of our warriors, and Dax, Blaine's oldest friend and his beta, was one of them. They buried them at dusk under a sky the color of a bruise. I stood at the back with the other wives. Blaine didn't cry. He shook hands. He said the words. He thanked people for coming.Near midnight I heard him in the corridor, and when I opened the door he was on the floor with his back against the wall, still in his funeral bla

Hazel's POVHe said it the way you set down something breakable. Carefully, and with both hands.I laughed. I couldn't help it. It rose out of me like a hiccup, high and brittle and horrible, and I pressed the ultrasound picture to my chest as if that might muffle it."That isn't funny," I said."No," said Roland. "It isn't."He wasn't smiling. He wasn't doing anything, in fact. He sat on that low stool with his forearms on his knees and his hazel eyes on mine, not blinking, not softening, and I understood that he was giving me the one thing nobody in my life had given me in years: the plain truth, undressed."It's mint," I said. "It's Marin's tonic. It's mint and honey and...""Wolfsbane. Silverroot. And something called graveroot, which holds the other two in your blood." He unfolded a sheet of paper and laid it on the table beside my knee. Columns of numbers. Chemical names. A line at the bottom, underscored. "The doses are tiny. That's what frightens me. Poisoners are usually carel

Roland's POVThe call came at eleven forty-one. I know because I was looking at the clock when the phone rang, on the sofa in my apartment with a medical journal open on my chest that I hadn't read a line of in an hour."It's Hale," said a woman's voice, clipped and low, no greeting. "Housekeeper at the Marshall house. She drank it in front of the whole table. She's on the floor of the linen room and she won't stop shaking. Come to the kitchen door. Don't ring. Bring whatever you'd bring."She hung up. I was already reaching for my bag.I had packed it that morning. I hadn't said so aloud, but I'd packed it. Activated charcoal. IV fluids and lines. A vial of moonleaf tincture I had made and remade twice in the basement lab on Thursday night because I couldn't bring myself to trust the first batch. Blankets. A stethoscope. My mother's small brass mortar, which I never use and which goes everywhere with me.I drove to Shadowpelt with the windows down to keep myself sharp. The ridge road

ROLAND'S POV “Hey,you.”A smile slowly stretched across Hazel's face as her eyes followed me into the room.“Hi,doc.”“How are we feeling today?” I asked and she shrugged.“A lot better actually,thanks to you.”“You sure it's just thanks to me?” I murmured as I leaned down and gently took her hand, pressing my thumb against her pulse.“Your body seems to be healing quite faster than normal…you've only been here for five days.”I glanced up to meet her steady gaze.And even in her disheveled state,I couldn't help but notice how beautiful she truly was,it radiated off her like an ethereal aura.“I just…” she paused, clearing her throat. “I just happen to have a…a strong immune system.”“I bet you do,” I replied lightly as I raised a hand to her face, gently spreading her eyes open as I directed the tiny light across each of her pupils.Her face turned a dull, almost imperceptible shade of red as the heart rate machine began to beep incessantly.In all my years on the profession,i