Chapter 1 The Mating Moon

Fiona

The bond hit me like a fist to the chest, and before I could draw breath to cry out, Logan Silverwolf was already shaking his head.

It came out of nowhere, a hook sunk deep beneath my ribs and yanked hard across the clearing. The air flooded with cedar and rain-soaked earth. Inside me, my wolf, who had been sluggish and dull for months, lifted her head and sang so loudly that tears burned my eyes. Thirty-one unmated wolves stood in the moonlit circle that night, and the Goddess had tied me to the one man in Silverwolf who could not afford to want me.

Logan stood on the far side of the moonstone in the black coat of mourning he had not taken off since his father’s pyre. His amber eyes flared gold the instant the bond snapped tight, and for one heartbeat I saw the boy who had dragged me out of the river when I was nine and called me the bravest girl in the pack. Then the gold dimmed. His gaze slid from my face to my body, to the lilac silk straining across my stomach, and finally to the hundreds of faces turning toward us in delighted disbelief.

“No,” he said.

He didn’t say it to me. He said it to the elders, and to Darius Stormbringer, who stood at his shoulder with one heavy hand already resting on his arm.

Somewhere behind me, a girl laughed.

The sound spread through the rings of wolves like fire through dry grass. I heard my name in it, and my father’s, and the word they always used when they thought I couldn’t hear. Someone near the torches called out, “The Moon must be blind tonight!” and half the warriors howled. A half-eaten honey cake sailed out of the crowd and landed at my feet, scattering crumbs across the moonstone.

“Don’t forget your supper, Luna!” one of the warriors’ sons shouted, and the laughter doubled.

Calista’s fingers locked around mine. “Fi,” she breathed. “Oh, Fi. Don’t look at them. Look at me.”

I couldn’t look anywhere but at him.

Logan stepped onto the moonstone, and the clearing went silent so fast that I heard the torches spit. He lifted his chin the way his father used to before passing judgment, and his voice came out flat, carrying and final.

“I, Logan Silverwolf, heir of Silverwolf, reject you, Fiona Moonwhisper, as my mate and as my Luna. This pack has buried its Alpha. It needs a Luna who can stand at its head and run with its warriors, not a daughter of the family that put my father in the ground. Whatever the Goddess intended, I will not bind Silverwolf to you.”

The bond did not simply break. It ripped, slowly, like a blade drawn back out of the wound it had made, and the pain dropped me to one knee. My dress split along the hip seam with a sound like a slap. The laughter came back louder, and this time nobody bothered to hide it.

Three weeks earlier, I had stood at the back of the square while they hanged my father for poisoning the Alpha. Rowan Moonwhisper had served the Alpha for thirty years, but grief had wanted someone to blame, and Darius had pointed the way. I had not believed there was anything left in Silverwolf that could hurt me worse.

I had been wrong.

“Get up,” Calista whispered, hauling on my arm with a tracker’s wiry strength. “Please, Fi. Don’t let them see you like this.”

I got up. My legs shook and my breath came in short, ugly gasps. I pressed a hand over the torn seam and made myself stand straight.

“Look at me,” I said.

It came out hoarse, but it carried. The laughter faltered.

“If you want to reject me in front of the whole pack,” I said to Logan, “then do it properly. Look at me and say it again.”

A muscle jumped in his jaw. His eyes flicked toward me and away, fast, as if I were too bright to look at. He opened his mouth.

Darius spoke first.

“The girl is in shock,” he announced, in the warm, reasonable voice that had convinced the council to hang my father. “A rejection is a cruel thing. Someone take her home before she embarrasses herself further.”

Two warriors peeled away from the crowd. One of them was Bram, whose stores I had saved from rot last winter, whose children I had slipped extra flour when his mate fell ill. He did not meet my eyes as his hand closed around my arm.

“Don’t touch her!” Calista flung herself between us, green eyes blazing. “She’s done nothing wrong!”

Bram’s grip loosened. I pulled free, and in the space that opened, I searched the crowd for one more kind face.

I found Luna Rosalind among the elders, small and grey-veiled in her widow’s mourning. When I was a child she had called me her little moon, fed me plum tarts in her kitchen, and scolded Logan whenever he teased me. Our eyes met across the clearing, and for one breathless moment I thought she might stop this.

She turned her head away.

“Fiona Moonwhisper.” The elder on the moonstone sounded shaken. “Do you accept the Alpha heir’s rejection?”

I could have refused and made him say it twice while the whole pack watched. But all my life I had made myself small so that other people would not have to feel uncomfortable, and I did not know how to stop on the worst night of my life.

I lifted my chin and gave them what they wanted. “I accept.”

My wolf threw back her head and howled.

It was one long, broken note that I felt in my teeth and in the soles of my feet, and it went on until I thought it would split me open. I clenched my fists until my nails cut my palms, and I did not make a sound. When the howl ended, she sank down inside me, deeper than she had ever gone, and the silence she left behind was so complete that I could not even feel her breathing.

Calista wrapped both arms around my waist. “I’ve got you,” she murmured into my hair. “I’ve got you, Fi. I’ll always have you.”

Over her shoulder, I caught Darius Stormbringer watching us. The false sorrow he had worn a moment ago was gone. He looked like a man checking a sum and finding it correct. Then Calista turned me gently away, and the moment passed.

Logan stepped down from the moonstone. He did not come to me. He turned to the captain of his guard, and in the stillness, his voice reached every wolf in Silverwolf.

“Have her belongings packed tonight. Fiona Moonwhisper leaves this pack at dawn.”

Author’s Note:

Thank you for choosing this book. It’s for every woman who was ever told she was too much or not enough. I’m plus-size too, so this one is personal. 😊 Add it to your library, and tell me in the comments what you think of Fiona.

With love, Lyra Lupine