Chapter 8

Chapter 8

ELENA

I slept.

And I dreamed.

I was back in Willowbrook. The fire was everywhere. Smoke filled the house, and my eyes were burning, and outside I could hear wolves howling and people screaming.

My mother was holding my face in both her hands.

"Listen to me, Elena," she said. Her voice was fast and shaking. "Listen. Get down in the cellar. Stay quiet. Don't come out, no matter what you hear."

"Come with me," I begged. "Mama, please, come with me."

"I can't. They'll find us both." She pressed her forehead to mine. Her skin was hot and wet with tears. "If anything happens to me, you find Kade. Do you hear me? Find Kade. Only Kade. He will keep you safe."

"Kade? The alpha? Mama, his wolves are the ones—"

"Only Kade," she said again, fierce. "Promise me."

Then she pushed me down the cellar steps and shut the door over my head, and everything went dark.

I woke up with a gasp.

Morning light was coming in through the new window. My face was wet. My hand was still closed around the silver pin so tight that its edges had cut into my skin.

Find Kade. Only Kade.

Why? Why would my mother send me to him? She was the one who told me stories about wolves. She was the one who said we should never mix with them. Why would she trust the alpha of the pack that was burning her village to the ground?

Unless she knew something I didn't.

I didn't leave the bed all day. I didn't eat. I lay there with the pin under my pillow and my mother's voice in my head, going over it again and again.

In the evening, Kade came to my door.

"There's a pack dinner tonight," he said. "I want you there."

"No."

"The whole pack needs to see you. They need to see you're under my protection. If you hide in here, they'll think you're weak. Or a prisoner." He paused. "And some of them want you to be one."

I sat up slowly. I thought about my mother. Find Kade.

"Fine," I said.

The great hall was the biggest room I had ever seen. Long wooden tables filled it from wall to wall, and every seat was taken. There must have been a hundred wolves eating and talking and laughing. A huge fire roared at one end.

The moment Kade walked in with me beside him, the whole room went silent.

A hundred faces turned toward me. Some were curious. Some were cold. Some looked at me the way a hawk looks at a mouse.

Kade led me to the head table and pulled out a chair beside his own. I sat down. My hands were shaking in my lap. Silas sat on Kade's other side. He gave me a small, friendly nod.

Slowly, the noise came back. People went back to eating. But I could feel them all still watching me.

I didn't touch my food.

Near the end of the meal, a woman stood up at one of the long tables. She was tall and strong, with thick, pale brown hair braided down her back and sharp green eyes. She was beautiful in a hard, dangerous way.

"Alpha," she called out. Her voice rang through the whole hall.

The room went silent again.

"Vera," Kade said. There was a warning in his voice. "Sit down."

She didn't sit down. She walked slowly up the middle of the hall until she was standing right in front of our table. She looked at me, and she smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.

"The old law says a Luna must be strong enough to protect her pack," she said. "A Luna must be a wolf. Or she must prove she's worth more than one."

"Vera," Silas said softly. "This isn't the time."

"It's exactly the time, brother."

Brother. I looked from her to Silas. The same light brown hair. The same shape of the face.

Vera turned to the whole hall and raised her voice.

"This human can't shift. She can't fight. She doesn't even want to be here. She ran away her first morning." A few people laughed. "Is that the Luna you want? Is that who will lead you when the humans come with their fire and their silver?"

Angry voices rose around the room. Some agreed. Some shouted her down.

Kade stood up. "Enough."

But Vera just looked at him, calm and cold.

"You can't stop this, Alpha," she said. "You know the law. Any she-wolf can challenge a Luna who hasn't proven herself. Even you can't break that."

She turned to me. Her green eyes locked on mine.

"I challenge the human," she said. "A fight in the ring, at the full moon. To the death."

The whole hall went dead silent.

I looked at Kade. His hands were balled into fists on the table. His jaw was tight. He looked at Vera, and then at me, and then at the elders along the table.

Nobody said anything.

I leaned toward him and whispered, "When is the full moon?"

He didn't want to answer. I could feel it through the bond.

"Two days," he said.