The Scentless Luna

"Drink it now."

The ceramic bowl hit the table hard enough to send a wave of dark liquid over the rim. Boiling tonic splashed across the back of my hand.

Pain flashed white behind my eyes.

I jerked away, cradling my burned hand against my chest while my other arm wrapped instinctively around my eight-month belly. The baby kicked once, hard, as if protesting with me.

"Watch what you're doing," I snapped.

The servant did not apologize. Claire had been assigned to the South Wing three months ago, and each week she grew bolder. Today she folded her arms and looked at me with the bored contempt people reserved for a problem no one important intended to solve.

"The Alpha ordered you to take your supplements. I'm not leaving until the bowl is empty."

"Then you'll be standing there awhile. I'm not drinking it while it's boiling."

Her mouth curled. "You think you still get to make choices?"

I looked at the welt rising across my knuckles. "I'm still Luna of Blackthorn."

Claire laughed.

The sound hurt more than the burn.

"You haven't been Luna since Alpha Ronan locked you in the South Wing."

A year ago, that sentence would have been unthinkable. I had sat beside Ronan at council dinners. I had carried the Blackthorn crest on my cloak. I had known the names of every patrol captain and every widow receiving winter provisions.

Then the Elders decided a scentless Luna was an embarrassment.

I had no wolf. No mating scent. No powerful bloodline anyone could parade before neighboring packs. I was the human-born anomaly the Moon Goddess had somehow paired with one of the strongest Alphas in the north.

Ronan had once called that miracle enough.

The Council had spent two years teaching him otherwise.

"Get out," I said.

Claire's gaze dropped to my stomach. "Starve the heir if you want. Serena says a real Luna would put the pup before her pride."

My chair scraped back.

"Serena is not Luna."

"Not yet."

The baby kicked again. I hated that Claire saw me flinch.

I crossed the room and opened the door. "Leave before I have you removed."

"By which guards?" she asked sweetly.

That landed because we both knew the answer.

The two wolves stationed at the end of my corridor reported to Ronan, not me. My access to the central keep had been revoked. My council seal had disappeared from my desk one morning without explanation. Even the household staff now received orders through Serena Vale, the pureblood daughter of a neighboring Alpha who had arrived six months ago as a "temporary political adviser."

Temporary had become permanent with remarkable speed.

Claire swept past me. "Drink the tonic before it cools. If the baby is born weak, no one will blame me."

I shut the door in her face.

Only then did I let myself breathe.

The South Wing had once housed visiting diplomats. Now most of the rooms stood empty, their fireplaces cold and their windows poorly sealed. Wind slipped through the frame beside my chair and lifted the edge of the thin rug.

I carried the bowl to the washstand and sniffed it.

Bitterroot. Ironleaf. Something medicinal underneath.

Nothing obviously dangerous, but after months of being told what to swallow, where to sleep, and whom I was allowed to see, obedience had begun to taste like poison even when it wasn't.

I poured half the tonic into the basin and drank the rest only after it cooled.

A knock came twenty minutes later.

This one was quiet.

"Elara?"

Ronan.

My hand stopped over the damp cloth I had wrapped around my burn.

He entered before I answered.

He still filled a room the way winter filled a valley. Broad shoulders. Dark hair damp from snow. Golden Alpha eyes that had once softened whenever they found me.

Now they went first to my stomach, then to the bowl, then to my bandaged hand.

"What happened?"

"Your servant happened."

His jaw tightened. "Claire said you threw the medicine at her."

I stared at him.

He had not come to ask what happened. He had come carrying someone else's version of it.

"Of course she did."

"Elara, I don't have time for another fight."

"Then stop arriving with accusations."

He exhaled and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "The Council is already agitated. Serena's father arrives tomorrow. I need the house calm."

"You need me quiet."

"I need you safe."

I laughed without humor. "In a locked wing?"

"You know what the Elders are like. Every time you challenge them, they use it as proof that a human cannot respect pack order."

"So your solution was to remove me from pack order entirely."

His gaze dropped.

That hurt more than if he had shouted.

I had spent months waiting for Ronan to say the South Wing was temporary. Waiting for him to return my seal. Waiting for him to choose me in a way that required more courage than visiting when no one important was watching.

He reached for my burned hand.

I pulled it back.

His expression tightened. "The healer will look at that."

"I'll manage."

"You're carrying our child. You don't have to manage everything alone."

"Then stop leaving me alone."

For one second, the man I married looked back at me.

His throat moved. He took half a step closer.

Then heels clicked in the corridor.

Serena appeared in the doorway wearing Blackthorn blue, though no one had ever granted her the right to it. Her pale hair was pinned at the nape of her neck. A silver council badge gleamed at her breast.

My council badge.

"Ronan," she said softly, as if I were not in the room. "Elder Garrick is waiting. The welcome dinner has been moved forward to tonight."

Her gaze slid to me.

"He wants Elara there too."

Ronan went still.

I looked from Serena's stolen badge to my husband's face.

"Why?"

Serena smiled.

"Because the Council wants to settle the question of the Luna before your baby is born."