The Luna

CHAPTER 1

The Luna Who Never Was

“Say it again.”

Wren Hartley’s voice came out smaller than she meant it to. Around her, three hundred members of the Silverpine Pack stood in the silver light of the full moon, and not one of them breathed.

“Say it again, Damien. Slowly. So I know I misheard.”

Damien Blackthorne, the future Alpha of Silverpine, did not look at her. He looked at the girl on his arm instead, Vivienne Cross, who wore a red dress to a white ceremony and a smile like a loaded gun.

“I said,” Damien repeated, louder now, so the back rows could hear, “that I will not take Wren Hartley as my Mate. My heart has only ever belonged to Vivienne.”

The clearing exploded into whispers.

Wren looked down at her hands. She had stitched this white dress herself, over four months of night shifts, every seam pressed flat with a borrowed iron. On her left palm, pale and thin as a thread, was the scar from the night she and Damien were eleven years old and cut their hands open before the Moon Goddess’s altar.

“You made a blood oath,” she said. “You swore it, Damien. You said you’d announce me as your Mate on this exact night.”

“Children swear all kinds of things.” He finally met her eyes, and there was nothing in them at all. “The Goddess doesn’t bind herself to a girl who can’t even call her own wolf. Let’s not pretend, Wren. We both know what you are.”

Wolfless. Nobody said the word aloud. They didn’t have to. She had heard it whispered behind her back for eighteen years, in school hallways, in the market, in the pitying silence of every pack gathering. Damien had been the one person who answered it with his fists.

“Don’t look so tragic,” Vivienne said lightly, flicking a strand of dark hair over her shoulder. “It’s only pack politics. You can’t be Luna. Honestly, you’d have hated it.”

Wren turned to the one person left in the clearing who was supposed to be on her side. Her father stood at the edge of the crowd, jaw set, hands clasped behind his back like a man waiting for a bus.

“Father?”

Gideon Hartley stepped forward. For one stupid, hopeful second she thought he would defend her.

“You have shamed this family for the last time,” he said. “You were born broken, and I let you live under my roof out of pity. No more. As of tonight, you are no daughter of mine, and you are banished from Silverpine.”

The word banished hit like a slap. Someone in the crowd laughed. Someone else clapped.

Wren did not cry. She had learned long ago that tears only gave them something to enjoy.

*   *   *

The pack infirmary smelled of antiseptic and lavender. Wren pushed through the door with her heels in her hand, still in the ruined white dress, and found her sister awake, propped against three pillows with a drip in her arm.

“You’re early,” Lily whispered, smiling. At sixteen, she was still too thin, still too pale, two years after the accident that had left her unconscious for four months. The doctors said she would need medicine and treatment every week for the rest of her life. “Did the ceremony go fast? Is it official? Are you a Luna?”

Wren sat on the edge of the bed, took her sister’s cold hand and tried very hard to keep her face still.

“Lily, I need you to pack a bag.”

The smile slipped. “What happened?”

“I’ll explain in the car. Quickly, please.”

“She’s not going anywhere.”

Her father filled the doorway. Behind him stood two warriors, arms folded.

“She’s my sister,” Wren said. “You banished me, not her.”

“And she is a minor under my authority, whose treatment costs this pack a fortune.” Gideon pulled a folded sheet from his jacket and dropped it on the blanket. A long column of numbers marched down the page. “Eleven years of specialists, medicine, private rooms. Pay it back, every cent, and you can take her wherever you like.”

Wren stared at the total at the bottom. It had six figures.

“You’re keeping her hostage.”

“I’m collecting a debt.” He didn’t even sound angry, and that was the worst part. “Leave, Wren. Now, before I have you thrown out.”

“Wren,” Lily said, her voice shaking. “Go. I’ll be okay.”

“No.”

“Please. Go before they hurt you.”

She kissed her sister’s forehead and promised, in a whisper only Lily could hear, “I will come back for you. I swear on the Moon Goddess.”

*   *   *

She was halfway across the parking lot when she heard heels clicking behind her.

“Wait up, Hartley.”

Vivienne Cross caught up, pulling a thick envelope out of her clutch. She looked entirely at ease, the way people do when they have never lost anything that mattered.

“Here’s the thing,” Vivienne said. “Damien and I are having a party tomorrow night. We thought, why waste a perfectly good ceremony? We’ll call it our engagement celebration. Masked theme, at The Crooked Moon.”

Wren’s stomach turned. The Crooked Moon was the bar where she had worked for three years, where she had earned every dollar she’d ever put toward Lily’s treatment.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because the staff is short.” Vivienne held out the envelope. “Five hundred dollars for one night of pouring drinks. You need money, don’t you? Your daddy says you owe a lot.”

Wren looked at the envelope. Every instinct told her it was a trap, a cruelty dressed as a favor. Vivienne wanted to see her serve champagne at her own funeral.

But five hundred dollars was five hundred dollars, and a debt was a debt.

She took the envelope.

“Smart girl,” Vivienne said, smiling. “Don’t be late.”

Wren watched her walk away, then looked up at the moon, round and merciless over the pines.

“Fine,” she told it quietly. “If you want me humiliated, I’ll do it with my head up. But one day, all of you will remember my face.”

She had no idea that the Moon Goddess was listening, or that the night she was dreading would change her life forever.