All Chapters of Blood of the forgotten moon: Chapter 1 - Chapter 7

“He’s here,” my stepbrother says from the doorway, and the way he smiles tells me everything I need to know about why.I don’t look up.The brush keeps moving. Back and forth across the stone floor in slow, steady strokes. The ceremonial hall smells like lye soap and old ash. It always smells like that. It has been since the night everything burned, and I don’t think about that, and I’ve gotten very good at not thinking about that.Fenwick leans against the doorframe. He’s wearing his good jacket.That’s all I need to see.“Did you hear me?” he says.“I heard you.”“Riven Calloway.” He says the name like he’s dropping something heavy on purpose, waiting to watch me flinch. “The High Alpha. Here. In Father’s study.”I wring the brush over the bucket. The water comes out grey.“Good for Father,” I say.His smile doesn’t move. It never does when he knows something I don’t want him to know. He looks at me the way he always looks at me, like I’m a joke that hasn’t finished landing yet.“Cl

I’m on my knees before I’m fully awake.That’s the thing about six years. The body stops waiting for instructions. Four in the morning and my hands are already moving, reaching for something to clean, muscle memory running the program before my mind catches up.It takes me ten full seconds, kneeling on the floor of a guest room in a strange estate, to understand that there is nothing here to clean.The floor is already clean.I sit back on my heels and look at my hands in the dark. I don’t feel embarrassed. I feel something quieter and harder to shake, the specific weight of realizing how deep something goes when you never chose to let it go that deep at all.I stay on the floor anyway. It’s familiar. That’s the worst part.That’s where she finds me.She’s young, nineteen, maybe twenty, dark eyes still soft with sleep, a tray balanced in both hands. She stops in the doorway and takes in the sight of me on the floor and her face does none of the things faces usually do. No pity. No co

“That’s the servants’ staircase,” Thea says from behind me. “Which means you’ve already found three exits, the linen storage, and the back route to the kitchen. How long have you been up?”I turn around.She’s leaning against the wall with her arms crossed and an expression that is not suspicious at all. It’s entertaining.“Since four,” I say.“And you’ve been mapping the estate.”“I’ve been walking.”“You’ve been mapping.” She pushes off the wall. “I can tell because you stop at every doorway and look both directions before you move. Like you’re calculating.” She tilts her head. “I find that incredibly interesting.”I don’t know what to do with someone who finds me interesting without an angle behind it. I file the feeling and wait.“Come on,” she says. “I’ll show you the parts that actually matter.”Thea’s tour is nothing like Oryn’s.Oryn showed me the estate. Thea shows me how it works.“See him?” She tips her chin toward a broad wolf crossing the courtyard below. “That’s Brennan.

“That came for you this morning,” Desi said, holding out the envelope. “Courier from the Eastern Reach.”I knew the handwriting before I even took it.I knew it the way you know the sound of a door you’ve been dreading. Not because it’s loud. Because you’ve heard it enough times to feel it before it even opens.I took the envelope. Didn’t thank her. Just carried it to my room, sat on the edge of the bed, and looked at it for a moment before I opened it.Fenwick wrote the way he did everything. Pleasantly.Three paragraphs of courtesy. Hoped I was settling in well. Hoped the transition hadn’t been too difficult. Reminded me, gently, warmly, like he was doing me a favor, that the Ardenne pack thought of me. That my father thought of me. That the debt I carried hadn’t disappeared just because I’d crossed a border.He didn’t threaten me directly. He never did.He didn’t have to. The threat lived in the spaces between the polite words. In the specific things he chose to remind me of. My st