The Barren Luna Reckoning

Lena POV

The oven timer goes off and I nearly drop the tray.

Steak with garlic butter, the way he likes it. Rosemary potatoes. Salmon, in case he is

sick of red meat after three weeks of field rations. I have been in this kitchen since six

this morning, and the counter looks like I'm feeding the whole pack. I'm feeding one

man.

My phone buzzes against the marble. It's Joel from the north gate.

Convoy just passed the checkpoint. Twenty minutes.

I wipe my hands on a towel and read it again, then a third time. Twenty minutes. I've

been counting days for twenty-three.

The dress hangs on the pantry door where I put it last night so I wouldn't change my

mind. Dark green, long sleeves, square neckline. On our second anniversary, Gavin stood

in front of a shop window downtown and said, "That one. It's the color of your eyes." I

had never owned anything that color before him. I've worn it on every birthday of his

since.

I take it into the downstairs bathroom and change fast. The zipper sticks halfway up my

back. I twist, get it, and stand in front of the mirror with both hands flat against my

stomach. Nothing shows. Nothing could. Four weeks, the clinic said when they called this

morning. I took the test at 6:10, alone on the bathroom floor with the door locked, and

when the second line came up I stayed there until my legs went numb. Then I drove to

the clinic in my slippers and had my blood drawn, because I didn't trust it. Five years of

not trusting anything that came in a box with a plastic stick.

Dr. Amari called at ten. "Congratulations, Luna," she said, and I said "Say it again," and

she laughed and said it again.

I look at the box on the kitchen table. White, with a green ribbon. Inside, under tissue

paper, the test. I rewrap the ribbon twice because my hands won't tie it right. I set it

down, pick it up, then set it down again.

Five years of tracking my cycle on a calendar taped inside the closet door. Five years of

Gavin pretending he didn't see the calendar. Five years of Elder Pryce at every gathering,

smiling over his wine glass. "No news, Luna?" And me smiling back. "Not yet, Elder."

Last winter he said it louder. "Some seats are meant to be filled by those who can fill

them." Forty people at the long table, and not one of them looked up from their plates.

Gavin came around to my chair afterward and put his jacket over my shoulders. He took

me to the lake house that weekend, just us. He never said a word about Pryce. He didn't

have to.

I pick up the box. The tissue paper rustles. I check my hair in the dark screen of the

microwave, fix a strand behind my ear, and walk through the front hall.

Outside, the pack is already gathering on the drive.

Maybe sixty of them. Warriors in the front, the rest behind, kids pushed up onto their

fathers' shoulders. Someone has hung a banner across the garage that says WELCOME HOME ALPHA in blue paint. The sun is low, and everything is orange. I stand at the top of

the steps with the box against my chest.

Three black SUVs come through the gate. Doors open before the engines stop.

Gavin gets out of the second one.

He looks tired. Dirt on his jaw, a cut healing on his forearm. He looks up at the steps and

finds me, and my whole body goes loose with relief. I smile so hard my face hurts. I take

one step down.

He doesn't come toward me. He walks around the back of the SUV and opens the

passenger door.

A hand comes out. He takes it.

Sloane Brandt steps down onto the gravel in a fitted black field jacket, unzipped. Her hair

is pulled back. Her other hand rests on the front of her shirt, low, over a small round

curve that shouldn't be there.

Gavin puts his arm around her waist.

I know that waist. I've seen her in the training yard since we were nineteen. Gavin has

said her name in front of me a thousand times. Like a sister, he'd say. Like a stubborn

little sister who throws better than half my men.

My foot is still in the air above the next step. I put it down.

The pack goes quiet, and then the whispering starts. It moves from the front rows to the

back. A woman near the front says "Her stomach," and a man answers "Gavin's?" Gavin walks Sloane up the drive. Slowly. His hand stays on her back. They stop four steps

below me.

"Lena," he says.

I can't answer. I'm still holding the box.

"Sloane is carrying my pup." He says it clearly, so the whole drive can hear.

Somebody in the back laughs, one short breath through the nose. Another voice, a

woman's, says what everyone is thinking. "Five years, and the Beta's daughter does it in

one night."

I look at Sloane. She is looking at the ground, but the corner of her mouth is wrong. It

isn't sad. It's still.

"Gavin." My voice comes out thin. "Say that again."

"We'll talk inside."

"Say it again."

Elder Pryce steps out of the crowd with his cane and his good coat. He takes Gavin's hand

in both of his. "An heir," he says. "At last. The Moon Goddess has been merciful to this

pack."

"Thank you, Elder."

"Strong stock, too. A warrior's blood." Pryce looks up at me, and keeps his hand on

Gavin's. "Better a living pup than a hen who never lays." A few people laugh. Not many. Enough.

Marta, the housekeeper who has brought me tea every morning for four years, studies

the gravel. She doesn't look at me. None of them do now. I am standing at the top of my

own steps and nobody will meet my eyes.

My ears are ringing. I can feel the ribbon cutting into my fingers where I'm holding the

box.

"Enough." Gavin doesn't turn his head. His voice goes flat and hard, the one he uses on

the training field. "Lena is still your Luna. Anyone who forgets that can say so to me."

Nobody says anything.

He climbs the steps and holds out his arms. His face is soft now. He's always known how

to make it soft.

"Come here," he says. "Come on, sweetheart."

I put my hand against his chest and push. Not hard. Hard enough that he steps back.

His eyes widen, and I see sixty people see it.

I turn around and walk into the house. Then I run. Up the stairs, past the hall

photographs, past the portrait of our wedding day. I shut the bedroom door and put the

box on the nightstand because I can't hold it anymore. My hand shakes so badly it

knocks the lamp. I steady it.

The door opens behind me. I don't turn around.

"What was that?" Gavin says. I hear a second set of footsteps. Lighter. They stop in the doorway.

"Sloane, wait outside," he says.

"I'm fine here." She leans on the frame with a hand on her stomach. "It's my business

too."

He lets her stay. I notice that.

Sloane walks in and sits on the edge of our bed. My side. She crosses one ankle over the

other and leans back on her hands, comfortable, while he talks.

"I walked out there after three weeks at the border," Gavin says. "I closed that crisis.

Eleven rogues down, no losses on our side. And my wife pushes me in front of the entire

pack."

I turn around.

"Your wife." My voice shakes. "Is that what I am?"

"Lena."

"You brought her home. In your car."

"She's pregnant. I wasn't going to leave her at the border." He rubs his face with one hand

and then his voice changes. It goes lower. Warm. I know that voice. It has talked me out

of every bad day I've had in this house. "Come on. I'm tired. I've been up thirty hours. I

just want a quiet room and my Luna. Can we do that? Sloane, give us a minute."

Sloane doesn't move. He steps toward me with his hand out.

"Don't touch me."

He stops.

"How?" My eyes are burning now. I don't try to stop it. "How did this happen? You're my

mate. You swore to me under the moon. I stood there in front of everyone and you

swore."

"It was one night."

"One night."

"We won at the river. The men opened the bottles. I drank too much. I don't remember

it." He says each sentence like he's rehearsed it on the road. "I woke up and she was there.

A few weeks later Dr. Hale, who was traveling with us, ran the bloodwork. It was

positive."

Behind him, Sloane looks at her nails.

"I love you," he says. "That has not changed. There is one Luna in this pack and it's you.

It will always be you."

"And her?"

"The pup is mine. I can't pretend it isn't." He takes a breath. "When it's born, you'll raise

it. You'll adopt it. It will be your child, Lena. Yours. Nobody can say you didn't give this

pack an heir." I laugh. I don't mean to. It comes out cracked.

"You've thought about this."

"The elders have been at me for years. You know that. This keeps the pack together. It's

for the pack."

"It's for the pack."

"Don't make a scene." He says it gently. That is the worst part. "Please. I'll make it up to

you. Whatever you want. Name it."

Name it.

The lake house, after Pryce called me a seat warmer. The jade bracelet, after the Harvest

Gathering, when the Beta's wife said I should stop "embarrassing the family" by

attending. The trip to Lisbon after the third doctor said there was nothing wrong with

either of us. Every time, a room with the door closed, his hand on the back of my neck.

I'll fix it. I'll make it up. Whatever you want.

I had never once said what I wanted. Not out loud. What I wanted was for him to stand in

front of me in public and say no.

I think of the box on the nightstand. Four weeks. A heartbeat I haven't even heard yet.

I don't need an adopted child. I have one. I have one right now.

My hand moves to my stomach before I tell it to.

"Gavin." My voice is steadier than I expect. "Listen to me. I need to tell you something

and I need you to hear all of it." "Lena—"

"I took a test this morning. I went to the clinic. I'm—"

Sloane cries out.

It's sharp, high, and it cuts me off in the middle of the word. She folds at the waist and

grabs the door frame with one hand.

"Gavin." She breathes in through her teeth. "My stomach. It hurts."

He's already moving. He crosses the room in three steps, past me, close enough that his

shoulder knocks mine. He gets an arm around Sloane and she leans her whole weight on

him.

"Call Dr. Hale," he says over his shoulder, to nobody.

"Gavin. Please. Look at me."

He looks back. For a second I think he'll stop. His eyes find my face and the box on the

nightstand, and then something pulls at him from the other side.

"Stop making trouble, Lena," he says. "You've always been the sensible one. Don't start

now."

He walks Sloane out. The door doesn't close behind them.

I stand in the middle of the room in the green dress with my hand on my stomach, and I

listen to his footsteps go down the stairs.