My Mate Rejected Me to Make Her His Luna

Elder Martin's fever spiked on a Tuesday.

I found her slumped in her armchair when I stopped by with her morning tea, her skin burning hot enough to make me drop the cup. It shattered across her floor—cheap ceramic scattering like my composure—but I barely heard it over the rasp of her breathing.

"Martin." I pressed my palm to her forehead, my heart hammering. "Martin, can you hear me?"

Her eyes cracked open, unfocused and glassy. "Storm coming," she mumbled. "Big storm."

"Don't talk. Save your strength." I was already moving, my hands reaching for my canvas bag where I kept my emergency supplies. The fever-breaking salve. I always carried the fever-breaking salve because elders were fragile, because winters were harsh, because—

My fingers closed on an empty tin.

No.

I tore through the bag, my breath coming faster. Chamomile oil. Willow bark tincture. Lavender compress. But the specific salve—the one my grandmother had perfected over decades, the one that required exact ratios of moonflower extract and elderberry reduction—that was in the Grimoire.

The Grimoire Cairo had sold for fifty dollars.

"No, no, no." My hands shook as I grabbed what I had. I could remember some of it. Most of it. The base was coconut oil and beeswax. The moonflower extract was three parts to one part elderberry. Or was it four to one? My grandmother's voice echoed in my memory, but the words blurred together, fragments of lessons I'd assumed I'd always have written down to reference.

I mixed what I could remember, my fingers clumsy with panic. The paste looked right. Smelled close. I smoothed it across Martin's temples, her wrists, her chest, whispering prayers to a Moon Goddess I wasn't sure listened to wolfless girls.

"Please," I breathed. "Please work."

Martin's breathing evened out slowly—so slowly I thought I was imagining it. Her skin cooled degree by degree. By the time the sun reached its peak, her eyes opened clear.

"You saved me," she said, her voice weak but steady.

I slumped against her chair, my own hands trembling. "Barely. I barely remembered the recipe. If it had been worse, if I'd gotten the ratios wrong—"

"But you didn't." Her weathered hand found mine. "The wolf you saved hasn't forgotten you, child. When the storm comes, remember that."

"What wolf? Martin, you're not making sense—"

"I'm making perfect sense." Her grip tightened with surprising strength. "The wolf you pulled from the winter trap. The one you nursed back to health when he was feral and bleeding. He remembers. And he's coming."

Before I could ask what she meant, voices erupted outside—excited, urgent. The full moon gathering. I'd forgotten it was tonight.

I helped Martin to her bed, made sure she had water and a blanket, then stepped outside into chaos.

The communal yard blazed with light—strings of bulbs crisscrossing between trailers, casting everything in harsh yellow. Wolves gathered in clusters, some already shifting, their forms rippling between human and beast. The full moon hung overhead, bloated and accusing.

Alaiya stood on the wooden stairs leading to the Morrison twins' trailer, her blonde hair catching the light like a halo. She was mid-shift, her body caught in that awkward in-between state that should have been private. But Alaiya never did anything private.

"Watch this!" she called out, her voice pitched to carry. Her bones cracked and reformed, her face elongating. She was showing off, preening, demanding attention even in her most vulnerable moment.

I looked away. I couldn't watch her anymore without feeling sick.

That's when I saw Tommy Chen.

The pup—barely eight years old—was climbing the same stairs, probably trying to get a better view of the shifts. He was small for his age, all gangly limbs and gap-toothed smile. Mrs. Chen's pride and joy.

Alaiya's shift stuttered. Her wolf form wasn't stable yet, her balance off. She teetered on the step, her front paws scrambling for purchase.

And instead of steadying herself, instead of shifting back, she shoved.

Tommy's small body flew backward. He hit the concrete steps with a crack that made my stomach drop. Once. Twice. Three times his body tumbled, each impact a sickening thud that silenced the yard.

He lay at the bottom, whimpering, his leg bent at an angle that made my healer's instincts scream.

I was running before I could think, my feet pounding across the gravel. But Cairo was faster.

His hand clamped around my arm like a vice, yanking me forward with enough force to make me stumble. I crashed into him, and he spun me around to face the crowd.

"It was Novalee!" His voice boomed across the yard, carrying that Alpha tone that made wolves freeze. "She was jealous of Alaiya's shift and pushed the boy! I saw it!"

The world tilted.

Every face turned toward me. Mrs. Chen's expression crumbled from concern to horror. The Morrison twins stepped back like I was diseased. Even the wolves mid-shift paused, their eyes—human and beast—locking onto me with predatory focus.

"What?" The word came out strangled. "No. I didn't—Cairo, I wasn't even near—"

"I saw you." His eyes bored into mine, and I saw the calculation there. The cold, deliberate choice. "You've been unstable lately. Jealous. Everyone's seen it."

"That's a lie!" My voice cracked. "Alaiya pushed him! She lost her balance and—"

"How dare you." Alaiya had shifted back, standing at the top of the stairs wrapped in someone's jacket, tears streaming down her face. "I would never hurt a child. Never. Tommy, sweetie, I'm so sorry I couldn't catch you when she—"

"Stop it!" I wrenched my arm from Cairo's grip. "Stop lying! All of you saw—"

But they hadn't. They'd been watching Alaiya's shift, mesmerized by her performance. By the time Tommy fell, their eyes had been on her, not on what caused it.

Mrs. Chen knelt beside her son, her hands hovering over his broken leg, her face twisted with rage and grief. When she looked up at me, I saw my death in her eyes.

"You monster," she whispered.

The crowd closed in.