Chapter 2
On Tuesday night, Ronan puts his hand on my knee under the dinner table and I don’t move.
Jonas is telling a story about a border guard who fell asleep in a supply truck and woke up in the next territory. The whole table is laughing. Ronan’s thumb moving against my kneecap, absent, proprietary, and I sit very still and let him. His hand is warm, like it always is. I used to press my cold fingers against his palm at these dinners and he’d close his hand around them without looking away from whoever was talking, and I’d feel that quiet heat travel up my wrist and into my chest and think this is mine.
His thumb makes lazy circles on my leg, and I watch his profile while he laughs at Jonas’s punchline — the easy laugh, the social one, the one that reaches his eyes just enough. I’ve memorized the catalog. I know which laughs are real. This one is, but only just.
Three days ago I stood in a doorway and watched him look at my twin with a expression he's never shown me. Something inside me broke that day. I went home and slept beside him and he curled his arm across my ribs at two a.m. and I lay there with his breath against my neck and the dark pressing in and I didn’t sleep again until morning.
His hand is on my knee. I can feel the warmth of it through my clothes, and underneath the warmth, the bond — that low pull that lives between his body and mine, threaded through with his scent. Cedar and skin-heat. The bond latched onto that scent when I was eighteen and my wolf found him across a crowded room, and it’s the one thing that can’t be shared. Soleil and I have the same face, the same body, but we don’t smell the same to a bonded mate. He always knows which one of us is beside him.
He knows right now. His thumb pauses mid-circle. He turns his head, just slightly, and for a half-second his gray eyes find mine and there’s something in them — not the hungry look from the fitting room, but a flicker of real attention. The kind I used to get in our first year, when the bond was loud and he’d lose the thread of a sentence because I walked into the room. The kind that stopped happening in the last few months, and I've only just realized it.
It lasts a half-second. Then Jonas says something about the northern checkpoint and Ronan’s eyes shift and the flicker files itself away, and he’s back to the version of him I usually get. Careful, considerate, thoughtful, and distant. I thought it was the stress of stepping up as Alpha, but now? Now I wonder.
I excuse myself early. Headache. He squeezes my knee once before I stand — a reflex, not a thought — and goes back to his conversation.
----
On Thursday, I cancel my session with Margot.
Margot Julian is Ronan’s mother and the current Luna — the one I’m supposed to replace in four weeks. She’s been my mentor for three years, ever since my gifts and bond to her son revealed themselves when I came of age. Every Thursday at nine, I sit across from her in the Luna’s study and we work through whatever’s on the table: Council protocol for the Ascension, diplomatic correspondence, the healer supply budgets I built from scratch that she still double-checks because she worries. She taught me how to read a Council chamber, how to deflect a hostile petition without raising my voice, how to hold a room by saying less than everyone in it. She’s good at her job. She’s kind. She makes me tea without asking and remembers which blend I like and she has never, not once in three years, said a single difficult thing to her husband or her son. Ever.
I message her at six a.m. Can we push to next week? I’m behind on the healer rotation and I want to get it sorted before the month turns. Professional. Reasonable.
She replies in twelve minutes. Of course, sweetheart. Take care of yourself.
The following Thursday, I don’t reschedule.
I skip the second fitting. I don’t message the seamstress — I just don’t go. She texts me at quarter past eleven: Ready when you are! I reply at two: So sorry — got pulled into something. I’ll rebook. But I don't.
I stop changing my schedule to let me attend the morning briefings in the Alpha’s study. I’ve been in that room every morning for two years, standing at the sideboard with tea going cold because I’m cross-referencing patrol reports with the diplomatic channels. Nobody required my attendance. I just showed up because I thought I should, because Margot was there for her husband and I wanted to be the same kind of Luna for Ronan. But eventually my presence became part of the furniture.
On Wednesday, I pass the study door on my way to my shift at the clinic and I hear Soleil’s voice inside. Low, easy, laughing at something Ronan said. Soleil has never attended a single morning briefing. Three years, and I’ve never once seen her in that room before noon.
Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. Friday.
Nobody sends me a message. Nobody knocks on my door.
Ronan mentions it at dinner. “Missed you at the briefings.” He’s picking up his fork when he says it. Already moving on.
“Healer scheduling. I’ve been buried.”
“Ah.” Fork to plate. The subject closes behind his eyes like a file being shelved. He asks Jonas about the eastern border, and I sit beside him with my water glass sweating in my hands and I can’t feel any of it — not the condensation, not my fingers, not the place on my knee where his thumb made that slow, warm circle two days ago.
----
Saturday. Petra Vassos catches me in the corridor outside the dining hall.
Petra is one of Soleil’s seconds — broad-shouldered, crooked nose she set herself after a training yard break, loyal to my sister in the bone-deep way that combat builds. She’s also the closest thing I have to a friend outside Margot and Soleil.
I’m carrying a plate I was planning to eat in my room. I’ve been doing that — eating alone. Not at the long table where I’d need to hold my face together for ninety minutes.
“Hey.” She falls into step beside me. Her voice is careful, warm — the voice of someone who’s been asked to have this conversation. “Haven’t seen you around.”
“Been busy. Healer rotation was a mess.”
“Yeah, Sol mentioned you’ve had a lot going on.” Petra glances sideways at me. “She’s worried about you.”
My feet stop. My body just stops, right there in the corridor with the late afternoon light coming through the narrow windows and my fingers going numb around the plate.
She’s worried about me.
Six days ago my twin stood on my fitting platform in my ceremony dress while my mate looked at her with his whole chest open, and now she’s worried.
“Worried how?” My voice comes out flat and steady and I don’t know where I’m finding it.
“Just — you know. She said you’ve been kind of absent. Missing your sessions with Margot, skipping fittings.” Petra shrugs, loose and easy. “She asked me to check in. Make sure you’re okay.”
The cold spreads up my arms and into my shoulders. I stare at the stone floor.
She asked Petra. She didn’t come find me herself, didn’t knock on my door, didn’t sit on my bed with her knees pulled up and her chin on her arms, which is what she used to do when we were fifteen and one of us was having a bad day. She’d just show up. No announcement. She’d sit on the end of my bed and wait until I talked or didn’t, and sometimes we’d fall asleep like that, her at the foot and me at the head, our feet touching in the middle.
She went to Petra instead. In the Sentinels' common room, probably, where half a dozen guards heard her say it. I’m worried about Sasha. She’s been missing sessions. Can you check on her?
“Did she say why she didn’t just ask me herself?”
It comes out sharper than I mean it to. Sharp enough that Petra’s stride breaks. She looks at me — really looks, not the checking-in look but the what was that look — and for a second the careful warmth in her expression falters.
“I — I think she said she didn’t want to crowd you. You know how Sol is, she’s —”
“Thoughtful. Yeah.” I can hear my own voice and it’s wrong, it’s too tight, there’s something in it I can’t get back inside. My hands are shaking. I shift the plate so she won’t see. “Sorry. I’m tired. Tell her I’m fine. Just reprioritizing before the ceremony.”
Petra’s face is uncertain now. She heard it. She doesn’t know what it was, but she heard the edge, and I can see her filing it away — another data point for the story Soleil is building. Sasha’s overwhelmed. Sasha’s snapping at people. Sasha’s not handling it well.
“Four weeks now, right?” she says, gentler.
“Four weeks.”
“Exciting.” She grins, but it’s softer than it would have been thirty seconds ago. “Sol said to tell you she’s around if you need to talk. Anytime.”
I nod. She claps my shoulder — careful, like I might break — and heads for the training block.
I stand in the corridor with a plate going cold and my jaw aching from how hard I’m clenching it. My hands won’t stop shaking. I pressed too hard. I let something show, and now Petra has a new detail for the story — not just absent, not just overwhelmed, but sharp. Difficult. The Moon Twin who snaps when you try to help her.
I think of my sister at the foot of my bed, fifteen years old, her feet warm against mine under the blanket. She had cold feet too, back then. The only other person in our family who ran cold. Somewhere between fifteen and now she warmed up, or I got colder, and I didn’t notice until this second when I’m standing in a hallway with my sister’s concern curdling in my chest and my own anger making me stupid.
I skipped two sessions with Margot. One fitting. Four morning briefings.
Ronan noticed on day four, at dinner, for half a sentence.
Soleil noticed by day two and sent Petra — and by tonight the pack will have a soft, sympathetic story about the Moon Twin who can’t quite handle the pressure. She didn’t have to lie about a single thing. She just had to frame it, gently, with the right amount of concern. And it works, because it’s true. I did pull back. She just made sure everyone saw the gap.
I go back to my room. Set the plate on my desk. Don’t eat.
----
Sunday morning, early. The kitchens at six, when the bread is just out of the oven and the kitchen wolves are too deep in the day’s prep to talk.
I’m at the counter slicing sourdough when Margot comes in.
Cream cardigan, soft gray shell underneath, the Luna’s pendant on its thin gold chain at her throat. Silver threading through dark hair at the temples. She smells like chamomile and lavender soap, and when she sees me her face does something complicated — a warmth, then a tightening behind it, her eyes going to my hands on the bread knife and then back to my face.
“Sasha.” She touches my elbow. Her fingers are warm. Everyone in this pack runs warm except me. “How are you, sweetheart?”
“I’m good. Want some?”
“No, thank you.” She watches me slice. I keep my eyes on the blade. “We missed you last week. Both weeks, actually.”
“I know. I should have rescheduled.”
“That’s what I told Ronan.”
My hand stills on the knife. “Ronan asked?”
“He mentioned you’d been absent from briefings. I told him you were swamped with the healer rotation.” She pauses. Her thumb moves against my elbow, the same absent circle Ronan made on my knee Tuesday night. Mother and son. Same gesture. “You know you can talk to me. About anything.”
I look at her. Twenty-six years as Luna of this pack. She reorganized my entire first season when I was drowning. She sat outside the negotiation room during my first border summit for four hours, just in case I needed her.
“Margot. Have you noticed anything — ” I stop. Start again. “With Ronan and Soleil. Have you —”
Her hand tightens on my elbow. Just a fraction. Her eyes drop to the counter — down and to the left, which is what Margot does when she’s deciding how much truth she can afford. It's a reliable tell, one I'm never sure if she knows she has.
“Soleil has been... more present lately,” she says carefully. “She’s been attending briefings — she started last week, after you —” She catches herself. Adjusts. “They’re working together on the Ascension security plan. It makes sense, with her Sentinel background. It doesn’t—”
She doesn’t finish. She doesn’t have to. The sentence was heading somewhere she couldn’t follow it, so she let it die.
“Right,” I say.
“Take a breath, dear.” She squeezes my arm, both hands now, holding on. “The ceremony will be here before you know it. Everything will settle down into a new routine after Ronan takes over.”
Everything will settle. As though what’s happening is weather. As though my sister standing on my platform in my dress with my mate’s hunger all over his face is a seasonal disturbance that will pass if I just breathe through it.
She almost said it. She got halfway to the real sentence and chose to let it fall. She knows, I'm sure of it, and I think she's known longer than I have. But she didn't tell me. Not even a hint.
Margot pours her tea, and touches my shoulder on the way out. The kitchen is warm and yeasty and quiet. Kitchen workers are preparing breakfast but no one is awake enough to be noisy yet, and I feel as if everything around me is muffled, softened. Like I'm not really present here any more than I am anywhere else in my own life.
Nobody is going to help me.
I eat the bread standing up. It’s warm and sour, with salty butter, and I make myself taste every bite, because if I stop paying attention to the small concrete things I will drown in the rest of it.
Then I pull out my phone. I open the Pack Charter and scroll until I find what I'm looking for, past the directory of Council members, session calendars, until I find petition procedures. I’ve never filed a petition in my own name. Every petition I’ve ever drafted has been on behalf of the Luna’s office, stamped with Margot’s seal, reviewed by Margot, submitted through Margot.
I find to the section on bond dissolution. Formal Rejection petitions must be submitted to the Council of Elders and approved. The bonded mate may file a counter-petition within forty-eight hours. During the review period, no changes to succession for either mate may be finalized.
I read it twice. Then I read the next line.
In the event of a contested petition involving members of rank, the Council may order an assessment to determine fitness for the respective roles.
A assessment. Ordered by the Council. To determine fitness.
I put the phone down. I pick the bread knife back up. I slice another piece, slowly, letting the teeth of the blade do the work. My hands are steady.
The system has a process for this. It’s very clean, very orderly, very fair. And every single step of it runs through the Council that Ronan’s family has led for three generations.