Chapter 4

Dane's face changed.

"Tamsin... Odessa's never stood in a moon circle. With her wolf the way it is, this might be her only chance."

She walked toward us slowly, eyes fixed on the gown.

"It's so beautiful." Her fingers hovered over the beading. "Could I put it on? Just to walk the circle one time?" Her voice dropped. "I won't live long enough to have my own. I only want to know how it feels."

Dane looked at me.

"Please. Just once around."

I picked up the gown and handed it to her.

What else was I going to do?

Twenty minutes later, Odessa walked the moon circle in my gown.

The wind off the lake lifted the hem behind her. Dane waited at the altar stone, the way he was supposed to wait for me.

Anyone coming up the path would have thought she was the one being marked tomorrow. And I was just the friend who'd come early to hold her shoes.

When she reached him, Dane took a small wooden box out of his coat.

My breath caught.

His mother's moonstone. A pale stone on a fine chain, worn by every Luna of Ironmere on the night she was marked. He'd told me, "My mother wore it. You'll wear it next."

"Just so she can feel it," he said, without looking at me. "Once."

He stepped behind her and fastened it at her throat. His fingers rested for a moment on the side of her neck. The exact place he'd always kissed on mine.

Odessa touched the stone. Tears ran down her face.

"Linnea," she whispered. "Can you see? Someone wants me too."

I stood at the edge of the ring and watched another woman wear the rest of my life.

"I want to see the lake," Odessa said. "Where Linnea's ashes went."

She crossed to the cliff edge, the gown trailing over the rock. I was standing closest.

I don't know exactly what happened next.

The ground at the rim cracked. Her foot went out from under her, and her hand shot out and closed around my wrist.

Then we were both going over.

Rock tore past my shoulder. I grabbed for anything and caught nothing. Above me, Dane threw himself flat at the edge and reached down with one arm.

Two hands were reaching up toward his. Hers and mine.

He took hers.

I fell.

The ledge was maybe ten feet down. I hit it on my side, and something in my ribs gave. My left arm scraped along the rock face, and when I looked at it, it was red from elbow to wrist.

Above me, Dane hauled Odessa up over the rim.

"Are you hurt? The pup—talk to me, is the pup all right?"

"I don't know..." she sobbed. "I just wanted to see her lake..."

She looked down at herself. The gown had torn on the rock, a long ragged split from hip to hem.

"Oh," she said. "It ripped."

Like it was a snapped thread. Nothing more.

Dane didn't even glance at it. He was running his hands over her arms, her face, her belly.

"Where does it hurt? I'm taking you to the healer. Now."

He lifted her.

"Dane," I called up. My voice came out thin. "My arm... I can't climb..."

He didn't stop moving.

"I'll send someone down for you. She can't take a shock like this. Her wolf could go!"

Then he was gone.

I lay on the ledge and listened to his footsteps fade down the path.

Nobody came.

In the end, I climbed up on my own, one handhold at a time, my bad arm pressed against my ribs. When I dragged myself over the rim, the circle was empty. Only the wind.

I walked to the altar stone.

My name was there, the newest one in the ring. Beneath it, in smaller letters, he'd carved the oath.

Chosen by Dane Carrow. His only Luna, under the moon.

I picked a sharp flake of flint off the ground and started scraping.

It took a long time. My blood dripped onto the stone while I worked. When I finished, there was nothing left of my name but a raw pale scar in the rock.

I left the line underneath. Let him read it.

Back at the cabin, I wrapped my arm and my ribs myself. Then I took the bead vial from my pocket and set it in the middle of the kitchen table, where he couldn't miss it.

No note. He'd had his chance to listen.

I packed only what was mine. Clothes. Papers. The money I'd saved working at the pack school, which I'd never once let him touch.

Everything he'd given me in five years, I left. The jewelry. The furs. The carved wolf he made me the first winter. All of it stayed exactly where it was.

At sunset, the Elder handed me the draught.

It tasted like river mud and iron. Then the pain came, like every thread tying me to Ironmere was being pulled out through my ribs, one at a time.

When it stopped, the world was very quiet. For the first time in five years, I couldn't feel Dane anywhere at the edge of my mind.

I walked to the river, crossed it, and didn't look back at the ridge.

Dane finally remembered Tamsin as the sun was going down.

He'd been in the healer's lodge all afternoon, watching Odessa sleep. The pup was fine. Odessa was fine. She only needed rest.

Once the panic drained out of him, he thought of the ledge.

Her arm. The blood. The thin way she'd called his name.

He ran the ridge path without stopping.

The cabin door stood open. The spare room was stripped bare. Her bag was gone.

On the kitchen table sat one small glass vial. Nothing else.

He was reaching for it when the pack link tore.

It ripped through him like a tooth torn out at the root, and his knees hit the floorboards. For five years, Tamsin had been a warm, steady hum at the back of his mind.

Now, where she'd been, there was nothing.

The ledge. The blood. He had never sent anyone down for her.

"Tamsin—"

Boots pounded up the porch steps. His Beta stopped in the doorway, out of breath and white-faced.

"Alpha. The Elder just finished a severing down at the river."

Dane stared at him. "Whose?"

The Beta swallowed.

"Tamsin's. She's not pack anymore."