The Broken Alpha's Luna

The knife in her hand was a bonding gift. She used it to gut the man who killed the wolf who gave it to her, and she has carried it every day since. *You said no one crossed the eastern ridge.* Tess keeps her voice low, almost a whisper, though the four wolves behind her have ears sharp enough to catch a snapped twig at fifty yards. She crouches at the creek's edge, fingers brushing the damp granite where the water has washed the blood downstream. Still pink. Still warm. Maybe ten minutes old. Micah is seventeen, wired tight, and desperate to prove he is not the pup she still treats him like, and his knife snaps open on the last word. Calla steps past without asking permission, nudges a torn piece of fabric with her boot, and says what everyone is already thinking. Rogues. Cheap whiskey and desperation. Heading for the meadow. The moonflower field lies half a mile beyond the ridge, the only place in two hundred miles where the pale blossoms push up through volcanic soil. Her grandmother planted the first bulbs, and her grandmother's mother before that. The pack holds the land because it holds the flowers. Then Ronan Voss steps out of the shadows between two cedars with his hands open at his sides. No weapon showing. Nothing in his posture that reads as aggression. Just a tall man with pale grey eyes cataloguing every wolf, every blade and every breath in that creek bed. He wants an oath sworn. She wants to know what he is actually doing on her territory. Neither of them gets the honest version for a long while, and the delay costs more than either expected. A raid she allowed to happen. A wound she gave him with her own hand. A sister held as the price of cooperation. A poison made mostly of secrets. Two packs. One meadow. Several bodies. No clean way through. *Thank you. For pulling me back.* *I'd do it again.* *I know.* A shifter romance about a woman who leads because nobody else survived to, and a man whose reasons for lying turn out to be considerably worse than the lying itself. The bond burns. The rescue costs. The ash is still warm when they start again.