Chapter Seven

The Moon Never Sacrifices

Lunar woke to the smell of meat.

She blinked groggily, her brain struggling to catch up with her surroundings. There was a fire crackling somewhere nearby, and warmth—real, solid warmth, like lying next to a furnace—pressed against her back. And there was a hand in her hair.

A large, warm, calloused hand, stroking through her silver strands with a gentleness that made no sense at all.

Lunar went very still.

She was lying on the blanket in front of the hearth, her head pillowed on something soft and firm, and there was a body pressed against her back—broad and warm and unmistakably masculine. The hand in her hair continued its slow, soothing stroking, and a low voice rumbled near her ear:

"You're awake."

Lunar's heart did a complicated thing in her chest. She tried to move, to sit up, but the arm around her waist tightened, holding her in place.

"Easy," Kaelen murmured. "You're safe."

"I—" Lunar's voice came out rough with sleep. "What—how long was I out?"

"Most of the night. It's nearly dawn." His hand moved from her hair to her shoulder, warm and steady. "You needed the rest. You were running on empty."

Lunar processed this. She was lying in the arms of a wolf—the Alpha, the most dangerous creature in the supernatural world—and he was stroking her hair like she was something precious.

Her face was doing something she couldn't control. She could feel the heat rising in her cheeks.

"Um," she said intelligently. "You can—you can let go of me now. I'm awake."

"I know."

"So why are you still—"

"Because you're warm," Kaelen said simply. "And I've been cold for nineteen years."

Lunar's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. Nothing came out.

Nineteen years. The same amount of time she'd been alive. Nineteen years of being cold, waiting for a warmth he couldn't name.

And then he'd found her.

"You're insane," she managed.

"Probably." He didn't sound offended. If anything, he sounded amused. "But I'm also right."

"Right about what?"

"About you." His hand found her chin, tilting her face gently toward him. "You're my fated mate. I've known it since the moment the moon started screaming your name. And I'll spend the rest of my life proving it to you, if I have to."

Lunar stared up at him. The firelight caught his face, and she could see the lines of exhaustion around his eyes, the stubble darkening his jaw, the slow, steady certainty in his gaze.

"Why me?" she whispered. "I'm not—I'm nothing. I'm just a sacrifice. I'm just a tool they were going to use up and throw away. I don't have anything to offer—"

"You have everything," Kaelen said. "You have your life. You have your freedom. You have that sharp tongue and that brave, stubborn heart. You have the moonlight in your blood, and the tides answering to your heartbeat, and a power inside you that could shake the world if you ever learned to use it."

Lunar felt tears sting her eyes. She blinked them back furiously.

"You barely know me," she said. "You can't—you can't just decide I'm worth all this. You can't just—"

"I can," Kaelen said. "And I have. And I will keep deciding it, every day, for the rest of our lives, until you believe it too."

Lunar's breath caught. Something in her chest cracked open, warm and painful, and she had to look away before she did something ridiculous, like cry.

"I need—" she started. "I need to think. I need to—"

"Eat," Kaelen said firmly. He released her, finally, and sat up. There was a plate of meat on the hearth—rabbit, from the smell of it, cooked over the fire—and he handed it to her. "You're no use to anyone if you starve."

Lunar took the plate. The meat was still warm, and her stomach gave an embarrassingly loud growl. She hadn't eaten in—she couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten. The priests had been fasting her in preparation for the ritual. She'd been too nervous to eat anyway.

She took a bite. It was the best thing she'd ever tasted.

"Slow down," Kaelen said, but there was warmth in his voice. "You'll make yourself sick."

Lunar ignored him. She devoured the rabbit, licked her fingers clean, and then looked up to find him watching her with an expression she couldn't quite read.

"What?" she asked defensively.

"Nothing." He shook his head. "Just—I like watching you eat."

"That's weird."

"Probably." He stood, stretching, and Lunar tried very hard not to watch the way his shirt pulled across his shoulders. "We need to get moving. They'll have scented the border crossing by now. We can't stay here long."

"Where are we going?"

"West. Into human territory. The packs and the coven both have rules about humans." Kaelen's mouth curved into a grim smile. "Neither of them will want to start a war over territory they're not supposed to touch."

"Humans," Lunar repeated. She'd never met a human. The coven had kept her sheltered her entire life, and humans were—well, they were human. They didn't have magic. They didn't know about the supernatural world. They were, according to the elders, "beneath the notice of the blessed."

"The humans don't know about us," Kaelen said. "And we're going to keep it that way. But their cities are full of places to hide—noise, crowds, electricity. Hard to track a scent through concrete."

"You've been to human territory before?"

"Many times." Kaelen's voice was flat. "I told you. The coven lies to you about a lot of things. The wolves and the humans have been trading with each other for centuries, in secret. We're not as separate as your priests like to pretend."

Lunar sat in silence for a moment, absorbing this. It was like being handed a key to a door she hadn't known existed—and realizing that the room behind it was full of things she'd been told were impossible.

"What else have they been lying about?" she asked quietly.

Kaelen looked at her for a long moment. Then he said, "Everything. But we'll get to that."

He moved to the window, peering out at the gray dawn. "Get your strength up. We have a long walk ahead of us."

Lunar finished the last of the rabbit and stood, testing her feet. They still stung, but the cuts had been cleaned and bandaged, and she could walk.

Kaelen had done that. Kaelen, who she'd met twelve hours ago, who had burned down her entire life to save her, had sat in the firelight and cleaned the cuts on her bare feet like she was something precious.

You're my fated mate.

The words echoed in her head, and Lunar felt something flutter in her chest that she refused to name.