chapter 5 You've Disgraced the Title of Luna

 

Briar's ears were still ringing.

She stood with her hand pressed to her cheek and looked at Killian because he was the only thing she could think to look at. He always knew what everything meant and she never did, but if she could just hold onto his arm for a second and explain, he would understand.

She reached out and grabbed his arm with both hands.

"Killian." Her voice came out thick. "The gift. It was a birthday gift. I planned it for a whole month. I wrote it all down." She still had the envelope in her pocket. She could show him. "The gammas said they remembered. I called them this morning and they all said they had it. I don't know why they ran ahead. I don't know what happened to the formation. Maybe they forgot? Or maybe they were going too fast and didn't realize? Because in the practices they always"

He looked down at her hands on his arm.

"Let go," he said.

She didn't let go. "Please just listen. I practiced the howl too. Vivienne said it was important to howl, that it shows the pack you belong, so I practiced it every day in the bathroom. I don't know why it sounded wrong. It didn't sound wrong in the bathroom."

"Let go of my arm, Briar."

She let go.

He stepped back from her and his face was the kind of angr.

"Where did you get the idea to do this," he said.

"I thought of it myself. I wanted to give you something real. Something that showed I was"

"The gammas." He cut her off. "The ones you used. Which unit."

She told him.

Something moved through his expression that she could not name. "That unit has been on eastern border rotation for six weeks. You pulled them from active patrol for a month of practices. For this."

She had not known about the border rotation. Nobody had told her about the border rotation.

"I just wanted to run with you," she said. Her voice broke on the last word and she hated it. "I just wanted to show you that I could keep up. That I was trying. That is all it was."

"You borrowed my best patrol gammas," he said, each word separate and deliberate, "for a month, to train for a performance where you ran across a ceremonial field on two legs and howled at the moon."

He took one step toward her and she took one step back, and the back of her heel caught the edge of a rock and she went down sideways, hard, her ankle twisting underneath her. Pain shot straight up her leg and she gasped and grabbed the nearest thing, which was nothing, and sat in the dirt with her ankle throbbing and her eyes burning.

"I did not know about the rotation," she said from the ground. "I am sorry about the rotation. But I did not know."

He looked at her sitting in the dirt and said nothing.

She tried to get up. Her ankle screamed and she made a small, involuntary sound and sat back down. She tried to look like someone who was fine. She was not fine. She pressed her lips together and breathed through her nose and told herself not to cry again because she had already cried so many times today and it never helped anything.

"Killian."

Vivienne's voice, warm and familiar.

She came through the crowd the way she always did. She was still wearing the cream coat and her platinum hair was perfect and she slid her hand through Killian's arm like it belonged there.

"Are your things all right?" she asked him. "I had them sent over this morning. I wasn't sure about the sizing."

"They fit," Killian said. His voice was completely different.

"Good." She glanced down at Briar on the ground with an expression that managed to be both concerned and faintly confused. "Briar. Are you hurt?"

Briar's whole chest opened up with relief.

"Vivienne." She reached up. "Vivienne, please. Tell them. Tell them you taught me the howl and the run. Tell them it was a gift idea and you helped me plan it. They think I just did it to cause trouble but I didn't, you know I didn't, please just tell them."

Vivienne's expression shifted. She tilted her head.

"I'm sorry?"

"The plan. You told me about the howl. You said it would show Killian I belonged. You said to run alongside the gammas and it would look like a real wolf run. You said"

"Briar." Vivienne's voice was very gentle. "I never told you to do any of that."

The ground felt unsteady.

"You did," Briar said. "You told me two days ago. You said the howl was the important part. You practiced it with me. You said"

"I think," Vivienne said carefully, glancing at Killian, then back at Briar, "that you may have misunderstood something I said. It happens sometimes." She paused. "Do you remember last week, when I told Gideon his new schedule was brutal and you thought I was calling him a bad name? You apologized to him for twenty minutes."

A few people near the front of the crowd laughed.

Briar's face went hot. "That is not the same thing."

"Or the time I said the ceremony dress was killer and you thought I meant it was actually dangerous and you wouldn't put it on." Another pause. "Briar, I love you. But sometimes words get a little scrambled between us. I would never tell you to run a wolf ceremony on foot. You know I wouldn't."

"You did," Briar said. "I remember. I wrote it down. I wrote everything down because I knew I might forget and I wrote it down and it is on the envelope, I can show you"

She pulled the envelope out of her pocket. The writing on the back said *they said they remember* and the points she had written down about the formation and the ridge and the howl sequence.

She held it out.

Vivienne looked at it kindly. "That says the gammas told you they remember. It doesn't say where the idea came from, Briar."

Briar looked at the envelope.

She was right. It didn't.

"Vivienne would never suggest something like that." One of the elder women, from somewhere in the crowd. "Look at her. She has always known how to conduct herself."

"That is what a real Luna looks like," someone else said, not quietly. "Not whatever this was."

"She and Killian have known each other since they were children. You can see it. The way they fit."

"I feel sorry for her, honestly. She cannot help what she is."

A child near the back of the crowd threw something. A stick, thin and whippy, and it caught Briar across the shoulder before she even saw it coming. Then another one, smaller, that hit the side of her knee. She looked toward the sound and there were three children at the edge of the group, the same ones from yesterday or different ones, it did not matter, and nobody in the crowd turned to stop them.

It hurt.

Briar looked up at Killian.

He had been there for all of it. He knew her. He had to know she was not lying.

"Killian." Her voice was very small. "You know I wouldn't make this up. You know I was trying to do something good. Please."

He looked at her for a long moment.

"What you did tonight," he said, "was an embarrassment to this pack and to the title you carry. The Luna of Silver Ridge does not run on two legs through a sacred ceremony and howl at the sky like a sick dog." His voice did not waver. "You have made every wolf in this pack a laughingstock. And you did it in my name."

Embarrassment... sick dog...laughingstock...

Briar sat in the dirt and her ankle throbbing and her cheek still stinging from Linda's palm.

She had tried so hard.

She did not understand how trying so hard could end up looking like this.

And then something in her chest just gave way and she started crying again, the big ugly kind she could never control.