The Jilted Mate's Rise To Supreme Luna

Ember's POV

Seven days until I'm bound to Deondre Langley.

The Bowers needed Langley's border troops. Langley needed our mineral corridor. I was the thing caught in the middle. My father hadn't even asked me.

I'd made my peace with it.

Aunt Martha was the only one who grieved it with me. She let me take her up to the Sanctuary, where Elder Silas Thorne handed me pine boughs and sweetgrass. I laid the offerings into the brazier the way I'd been taught, listened to a few words of blessing, and helped her back down the hill. The armored SUV was waiting at the gate. I climbed in. The door shut, and the heater seeped into my fingertips.

The engine pressed low against my ears. Then the rear tire blew.

The sound was sharper than a gunshot. The car lurched right, the seatbelt cut into my shoulder, and my head cracked against the side window. White light burst behind my eyes. The tires screamed on the asphalt, gravel spraying, nothing outside but spinning gray and dead grass. The SUV finally stopped on the shoulder, hood smoking.

The driver drew his gun and screamed at me not to move. Out of the dust, three Rogue wolves came walking out of the dead brushwood. Too big. Too thin. Gray coats crusted with mange and dried scabs, jaws split wide to the ear. The stink of rot came through the door seams.

The biggest one hit the hood. Silver-black claws punched through the windshield, glass spraying inward, and it dragged the screaming driver out through the gap. Blood slapped across the seats, copper flooding my throat. The second tore the rear door off, teeth snapping inches from my ear.

I didn't scream. My right hand found the silver dagger. When it lunged into the cabin, I put the blade into the soft hollow under its jaw. Silver hissed against wolf flesh, and the stench of scorched fur filled my nose and mouth. It yelped, pulled back, and went down twitching in the dirt.

I climbed out the other door and hit the gravel with my shoulder. My dress ripped. My knees split open, the pain sharp and bright. I pushed myself up and ran for the abandoned pump station fifty yards off. Behind me the third wolf howled and came, claws hammering the ground, closer with every stride.

I squeezed through the broken metal partition, pulled my wolf sense in tight, held my heartbeat down, back pressed to a rusted pipe, both hands locked on the hilt. Its muzzle pushed through the gap. Hot, wet breath steamed against the metal, drool hitting the ground inches from my boot. My muscles ached and shook.

Then, as it took a step toward my shadow, an overwhelming Alpha pressure came down.

The air went heavy all at once. The rogue froze, whined, and ran with its tail tucked.

I slumped against the pipe, gasping, sweat soaked through my collar. Through a gap in the wall I could hear the sirens closing in, blue light sweeping the wreckage of the pump station in slow pulses.

Between the flashes, a figure in a black cloak crossed the waste ground behind the station. Tall, wide-shouldered, moving fast, like a shadow cut out of a storm. I narrowed my eyes, trying to make him out, and he was already gone into the gray dead grass, leaving only a trace of cedar and blizzard in the air.

"Ember!"

Brandee's voice came from the highway, sweet enough to rot teeth. I stayed flat against the rusted wall. The Langley convoy sat on the shoulder, silver falcon emblems cold under the headlights. Deondre got out, his uniform knife-creased. Brandee had her arm through his, rose perfume heavy enough to fight the wind. There was red clay on her heels.

I never expected that all of this had anything to do with Brandee.

They walked a few steps toward the pump station. Deondre frowned and scanned the waste ground, hand resting on the holster at his hip. Brandee went up on her toes, peering, her gaze skipping right over the Rogue's corpse and never quite reaching the pipe where I was hidden.

I didn't make a sound. My fingers tightened on the dagger, blood running off my knee onto the broken brick at my feet.

Where the cloaked figure had vanished, there was nothing but dead grass bending in the wind.