The Alpha's Chosen Luna (The Watch Her Leave #5)

Chapter 1 The Last Night

The moon hasn't moved.

I've been watching it long enough to know. It sits in the same corner of the window frame, pale and unhurried, while I sit on the edge of my bed in the dark and wait.

Callum said, "I'll be right back."

That was two hours ago.

I don't turn on the lamp. The dark is easier. In the dark I can pretend I'm just waiting for someone who got caught up talking, someone who lost track of time, someone who still belongs to me.

The pain starts without warning.

It's deep — deeper than muscle, deeper than bone. Something in my chest that I didn't know had a shape until the shape collapsed. The incomplete bond. The tether that Callum and I never finished building, never sealed with a mark, because we were waiting for tomorrow.

Tonight was supposed to be the last night it was unfinished.

My fingers seize the corner of the blanket. I press my knuckles down and breathe through it, slow and flat, and I wait for the worst of it to pass.

It does. In about thirty seconds, the sharpest edge pulls back.

I thought I could take this. I ran the numbers in my head, every possible outcome, and I assigned this one a high probability. I thought knowing the odds would soften the landing.

It doesn't.

The pain fades, but something else rises in its place — my wolf, restless and low in my chest, making a sound I don't have a word for. She's not howling. She's pulling.

Go look. The thought doesn't feel like mine and it does. What if there's a reason. What if it isn't what you think.

I know exactly what it is. I am not a person who fools herself.

My legs move before I decide to let them.

The hallway is dark. The house is quiet.

I climb the stairs to the next floor and I know where I'm going without choosing to go there, Isabella's room, at the end of the east wing, the room my father gave her when she moved in.

The door isn't closed all the way.

A line of warm amber light falls across the hallway floor. I stop outside it, and through the narrow gap I can see:

Callum, lying on the bed. His head is bent. His mouth is pressed to the side of Isabella's neck, just at the curve where the shoulder begins, the exact place.

He's not kissing her roughly. He's kissing her the way you kiss something you just made permanent. Slow. Like a man reading something he wrote himself.

The mark is already there.

My wolf makes one small sound. Then she goes still.

I push the door open.

The hinge is loud in the quiet. Callum's head snaps up. He pulls Isabella against his chest in one motion, her bare back to his arm, and he turns to face me.

I look at him. He looks at me.

"Are you sober?" My voice comes out flat.

The silence lasts a long time. Long enough that I count my own heartbeats. Long enough that Isabella shifts against him, and he holds her closer.

"Yes." His voice is barely audible. "It's my fault. Don't blame her."

He takes half a step forward. His hand lifts at his side.

The floor tilts. I don't reach for the doorframe in time.

***

My wrist hurts.

That's the first thing. A sharp sting at the inside of my wrist, and then I'm looking at a ceiling I know, my own room, my own bed, morning light pressing at the curtains.

The pack healer is beside me. She gives me a small apologetic look and pulls the needle free. "No lasting damage. Your Alpha would like to speak with you."

I sit up. My father stands at the foot of the bed, arms folded. Moira stands beside him, one step back, her hands clasped.

Moira speaks first, in the careful, cushioned tone she uses when she wants something.

"Rowan, things have reached a point where — Callum has marked Isabella. Your bond is severed. Saying anything more won't change that now." She pauses, like she's giving me time to absorb it.

"I know this isn't fair to you. But the guests are already here. If we cancel now, it's Silverpine that suffers, and that includes you."

"The ceremony goes ahead tomorrow," my father says. "The contract transfers to Isabella. We're not giving anyone a reason to laugh at this pack."

I stare at the ceiling for a moment.

They didn't wait until morning. They came now, in the gray hour before dawn, to make sure I'd agree.

"Alright," I say.

No questions. No argument.

I turn onto my side and face the wall, and after a moment, I hear them leave.

I don't know how long I stay like that. Long enough for the light to change.

My father keeps me in the room.

He doesn't say you're not allowed out. He says it might cause talk if you're seen at the ceremony. He says it almost gently.

So I stand at the window.

The courtyard below is full. Chairs arranged in the pattern I chose. I went back and forth on the angle of the rows three times until it felt right.

The candles on the reception tables, pillar style, ivory, because tapers tip in wind. The flower arch at the entrance, white and trailing, installed yesterday morning by the vendor I'd been emailing for six weeks.

Everything down there, I know. Every detail passed through my hands.

Except the dress.

Isabella walks under the arch in a dress I've never seen. Champagne silk, off the shoulder. I don't know when she bought it. She must have known for a while.

It's a beautiful dress.

I watch without blinking. The officiant speaks. The guests applaud at the right moments.

When Callum takes the ring, the Luna ring, and slides it onto Isabella's finger, she laughs. Not a polite laugh. A real one, bright and open, like she forgot there was anyone watching.

The sound comes up through the glass.

I take one step back from the window.

After the ceremony, he moves in. That was always the plan: Foxglen absorbed into Silverpine, Callum taking up residence in the manor, the two packs folding into one set of hands. Our hands, I thought.

I can't live in this house with them in it. The thought doesn't come with heat. It comes with a strange, almost administrative clarity, like crossing something off a list.

I open the top drawer of the dresser and take out my identification documents. My passport. The card I've kept in the back of the drawer for many years, untouched, the one funded by what my mother left me.

Below, someone gives a toast. The guests laugh and clink glasses.

I walk down the back hallway, past the side door that opens to the garden path, and through it.

I don't look back.