All Chapters of AFTER DIVORCE, I BECAME A LUNA: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

Josie's POVThe thousand girls in Mirror Hollow started howling at midnight.Not through old Tree. Through east gate. The gate that had been open two days and nights. The gate where council buried Mom's blood in boxes to make her barren.We heard it because the wind changed. It came from east, not west. Cold wind, smelling like obsidian and old blood and wet wolf.Lumen shot upright from where she was sleeping on courtyard dust - she refused a bed, said she wanted footprints - her transparent hair standing straight up."They found gate," she said. "They can't use old Tree door anymore because I let go. Now they found east gate. Same boxes, same blood, same place council buried to make barren. They're trying to walk themselves through."Rowan, who used to be baby Tree ten feet tall and now was a ten-year-old boy who kept picking bark out of his hair, pressed his silver-mirror eyes shut."I hear cages breaking over there," he whispered. "Thousand girls. Thousand years. All at once."Cae

Chapter 83:"Nobody leaves this courtyard hungry," Mom said. "Not the girls. Not the Alphas. Not even the ones who came to knock down my tree."She said it so calmly that for a moment nobody moved. Seven big men sat naked in the dust, wrapped in blankets someone had thrown at them. Two hundred and twenty-two silver girls stood in a wide circle with their arms crossed. Nobody trusted anybody."Jo," Mom said. "Soup."Jo, who is ten and has the most dangerous spoon in the whole pack, grinned and ran to the kitchen.I sat on the edge of the old well and tried to stop my hands from shaking. My throat hurt from singing. My legs felt like wet bread. But my heart was loud and happy, because nobody had died. Not one wolf. After all the howling and the biting, after the gate and the Alphas and the dust that smelled of old blood, nobody was dead."You look like a ghost," Caelum said, landing next to me with a thump. He was in his boy shape today, tall and skinny, with mirror-light still shining

Chapter 85:"Don't touch her," Cole said. His voice cracked. "Please. Not yet. Let me look."He knelt in the dust in front of Candice. She was shaking. Up close I could see she was young, not much older than Mom, with a pretty face that someone had hit more than once. Her dress was torn at the shoulder. There was dried blood in her hair.I remembered her name. Mom had said it in the courtyard last night: "They walked away with Candice while my daughter burned." That was the woman. The one who took Cole away when Mom needed him most. I had imagined her a hundred times in my head, tall and cold and cruel, with sharp red nails.She did not look like that. She looked like a lost kid."They threw me out," Candice said. "Four days ago. I was a use to them. Then I wasn't.""Who threw you out?" Cole asked."The Court. Marrow." She said the name like it tasted bad. "I told them I would help. I told them I'd watch you, Cole, and tell them what you did. I thought it was just a job. I thought it

Chapter 87:"By order of the Obsidian Court," the messenger read, "the gate at Hallow Fortress must be closed by sunrise on the third day."His voice was thin and dry, like paper. He was a small grey man in a black coat, and he held the letter in both hands as if it might bite him. He stood in the middle of our courtyard and read it to all of us, three hundred people, with a very straight back and very shaky knees.Behind him stood three old wolves in grey robes. The Elders of Hallow Pack. I knew them from Mom's stories. They were the ones who had said she was too weak and too used to be Luna."Furthermore," the messenger read, "all silver-blooded persons within the walls are to be handed over to the Court for safekeeping. All Alphas present are to return to their territories and report. And Alpha Xavier Holt is to appear before the Court to answer for his crimes.""What crimes?" Dad said calmly.The messenger swallowed. "It does not say.""How convenient.""If these terms are not met

Chapter 89: Cole's Confession"Walk with me," Cole said. "Please. Just to the top of the stairs. I will not ask for more."I almost said no. It was the next morning, and I had just come out of the kitchen with a bucket of water. The sky was pink. The courtyard was still half asleep. And Cole was standing in front of me with his hands in his apron, looking like a man who had not slept in a hundred years."Why?" I said."Because I have something to tell you. And I do not want to tell it in a kitchen."I should have said no. But something in his face made me put the bucket down.We climbed the old stone stairs that wind up the east tower, past the guards on the wall, past the place where the thread of old Tree shines in the morning light. Cole moved slowly. His knees cracked. He stopped twice to catch his breath. At the top there is a small flat roof with a low stone wall, and you can see the whole valley from there, the broken gate, the dusty road, the far blue mountains where the Court