His New Luna Branded Our Daughter

The bond went sweet at 11:47 p.m., and that was how I knew he had chosen someone else.

I felt it before I understood it—a warm, greedy pulse pushing through the mate bond into my chest, arousal that did not belong to me and was not aimed at me. My daughter was still slick against my breast, her mouth pressed to my skin, less than an hour old. My legs were still shaking from what my body had just done alone in that room. And through the cord that tied me to Thiago Webb, I felt him smiling at another woman.

My wolf—my quiet, half-buried wolf—let out a low whine inside my ribs. Confused. Like a dog hearing its name from a stranger's voice.

"Luna." Clara Vance stood at the foot of the cot, hands folded in front of her healer's apron. She had not spoken during the labor except to count. She was not speaking now to comfort me. She had heard something on the pack link and she was watching my face to see if I had heard it too.

I hadn't. Not yet. I had closed the link hours ago because I could not stand to hear cheerful voices while I bit through a leather strap and pushed a child out onto a table by myself.

I reopened it.

It came in like a party through a broken window.

*—she's stunning, did you see her—*

*—Lycan blood, in Silverfang, our pack—*

*—Alpha finally got what he deserved—*

*—the old Luna? she's in the healer wing, isn't she—*

*—doesn't matter, he's already rejecting her tonight—*

Something in me went very still. Not shocked. Still.

I bent my head down to my daughter's ear. Her skin smelled like blood and new milk and the faint, floral thing that meant she was mine.

"Aurelia," I whispered. The name I had picked out three months ago and told no one. Not the healer. Not Thiago. Not the pack. "Your name is Aurelia. Remember it. I said it first."

Her tiny fingers closed around my thumb.

Then the bond pulsed again, and I felt Thiago laugh. Somewhere across the grounds, in a room lit with candles, my mate laughed low in his throat because a woman had touched his arm.

My wolf stopped whining. She lifted her head inside me for the first time in years.

I sat up.

"Luna." Clara stepped forward. Her voice tightened. "Luna, you cannot—your body is not—there was tearing, there was blood loss, you need—"

"Bring me a robe."

"Luna—"

"Clara." I looked at her. I did not raise my voice. I have never raised my voice in this pack. "Bring me a robe or step aside."

She stepped aside.

I wrapped my daughter against my chest with the sheet from the cot because I did not have anything else, and I did not want to wait for anything else. I pushed my feet down onto the cold tile. The room tilted once, hard, and I let it. When it settled I walked.

Every step sent a slow tearing heat up through me. The gown I still wore was stuck to the backs of my thighs with blood that had not finished drying. I could feel it break loose and start again as I moved. I did not stop moving.

The healer wing opened onto the courtyard. Cold October air hit my face and my lungs and the crown of my daughter's head, and she made a small hurt sound against my collarbone. I curled my arm tighter around her.

*Just to the pack house. Just that far.*

The pack house sat at the far end of the compound, three stories of pale stone with tall windows lit gold from the inside. I had signed the check for that stone. I had signed the check for the roof, and the electrical, and the ceremonial hall in the east wing where the candles were burning right now. I knew because I kept receipts. I had grown up in a court that taught me to keep receipts.

I followed the bond like a leash. It tugged forward, warm at the other end, warm for someone who was not me.

Halfway across the courtyard I felt his arousal spike again. My knees gave. I caught myself on the low stone wall and stood there for a second with my daughter mouthing blindly at my neck, and I breathed through my teeth and did not cry, because crying was a thing I had used up in the delivery room and there was none left for him.

My wolf pressed against the inside of my chest. Not whining now. Listening.

"Soon," I told her. I don't know if I said it out loud.

I walked the rest of the way.

Music was playing inside. Something soft and expensive. I could see them through the tall windows before I reached the doors—the whole pack, dressed in ceremony white, arranged in a half moon around the stage. Marcus Thorne at the front, Thiago's Beta, smiling like a man about to be promoted. Luisa Webb near the dais in cream silk, one gloved hand resting on the podium as if she had built it.

And on the stage, beside my mate, in a white dress cut low at the collarbone: Phoebe Jones. The girl I had signed into this pack myself. The girl I had given a room, and a stipend, and the run of my private wing. She was trembling. One small hand rested on her flat stomach in the exact way a woman signals a pregnancy she wants noticed.

I pushed the doors open.

The music did not stop, but the pack turned. A hundred faces. A hundred small in-breaths.

Thiago turned last, unhurried, from where he stood with Phoebe's fingers hooked into his sleeve. His golden eyes found me in the doorway—me, in my blood-black gown, my newborn wrapped in a bedsheet against my chest.

He did not look surprised.

He had been waiting for me to arrive.

He smiled, and lifted his chin, and opened his mouth to speak.