When My Mate Chose the Rogue

My name is Ariana Larson. Beta Female of the Silverfang Pack, the youngest in our recorded history. Daughter of Margaret Larson, former Luna, and the late Alpha she still grieves. I am twenty-two years old, and for three of those years I have loved Kellan Thomas with the full, stupid devotion of a fated mate.

I thought that was the most important thing about me.

I was wrong.

It was past midnight when I came in from patrol. The pack house was quiet, the way it always gets after the second shift settles. My boots were wet from the trail. My shoulders ached from a long run along the eastern ridge. All I wanted was a glass of water and the cool dark of my own room.

I did not get either.

The kitchen light was on. A soft yellow square spilling into the hall. I heard the fridge open, then the small clink of a glass on the counter. Emelia. Of course it was Emelia. She kept night hours like a cat, drifting through our halls in borrowed slippers and one of my mother's old silk robes.

I stepped into the doorway and stopped.

She had her back half-turned, pouring water from the filter pitcher. The robe slid off one shoulder. And there, against her collarbone, hanging from a thin silver chain, was my grandmother's moonstone pendant.

My wolf went still inside me. Not tense. Not snarling. Still. Like an animal that has just realized the trap is already closed.

I know that stone. I have known it since I was a child. My grandmother used to let me hold it on her lap during pack ceremonies. The luminescence is wrong on a fake — too even, too cold. The real ones glow from the inside, like there's a small moon trapped under the surface. The weight is wrong too. Heavier than it should be for the size. A Luna heirloom always is.

This was real.

This was ours.

Emelia turned, saw me, and smiled the way she always smiled at me. Soft. Grateful. A little shy.

"Ari. You're back late."

"Long patrol," I said.

My voice was even. I did not look at the pendant. I did not look at her hand when it drifted up and touched it, the way a woman touches a piece of jewelry she has already decided belongs to her.

"Your mom said I could borrow it," she said, soft, casual. As if the moonstone Luna pendant of the Larson bloodline were a cardigan.

"It looks nice on you," I said.

I got my glass of water. I drank it slowly. I told her goodnight. I climbed the stairs without rushing, walked down the hall past Kellan's door without slowing, shut my own door behind me, and locked it.

Then I sat on the floor and pulled my journal out from under the loose board beneath my bed.

I have kept this journal since I was eight. It is not a diary. There is nothing tender in it. Dates. Observations. Patterns. Names. The handwriting at the front is round and childish; the handwriting at the back is the small, square print I use now. I flipped past three years of entries and laid them open across the rug.

Kellan, three weeks last spring — said training, did not show on the Ironridge roster.

Kellan, six days in August — said training, no roster entry.

Emelia arrived March of last year. Mom said she felt called to help. Mom mentioned a vision. Mom mentioned a healer I did not know.

Mom, last month, in the garden — "I've been helping the children with a few expenses. Don't worry, sweet girl."

I had circled that one. I had not pushed.

I got up, walked to my desk, opened my laptop, and logged into the Larson family pack fund.

It took me twenty minutes to stop being able to breathe.

Three thousand at a boutique in Seattle. Eight hundred at another. Personal transfers to an account I did not recognize, every month, like a salary. Recurring payments to a healer I had never been introduced to. Line after line of small bleeding cuts that, stacked together, came to nearly forty thousand dollars over eighteen months.

Forty thousand dollars of my bloodline's wealth, walking around our pack house in a silk robe with my grandmother's moon at its throat.

I did not cry. I want to be honest about that. I sat there with my hand on the trackpad and felt my wolf sink down into the deep place she goes when she is preparing to kill something, and I froze every account.

Every one. Checking, savings, the trust feeder, the discretionary line my mother used. Locked, with a single keystroke. No notice. No explanation.

Then the mind-link came.

Kellan's voice, warm as bathwater. "Hey, baby. You up? I just felt something off. You okay?"

Three years ago that voice would have melted me down to the bone. I closed my eyes and felt the bond pull, the cedar-and-rain memory of it, and I let myself feel it for exactly one breath.

Then I answered, perfectly even. "Long patrol. Headed to bed. Goodnight."

"Love you," he sent.

I did not answer that one.

I wrote down the time. 12:47 a.m. I wrote down the words. I closed the journal.

Then I went up to the roof.

The night was cold and high and full of moon. I climbed out my window the way I had since I was fourteen, sat on the ridge tile above my own bedroom, and let my wolf rise up under my skin until my throat hurt with her.

I let her howl once. Just once.

It was not a battle sound. It was not a warning. It was the sound a she-wolf makes when she finally understands that the mate the Moon Goddess gave her has been eating her alive for three years and smiling about it. It went up into the dark and broke off, and I pressed my hand against my mouth and did not let a second one come.

Then I went back inside and got to work.

I did not sleep. By four in the morning I had a contact name from a Beta in another territory: Declan Marsh. Rogue tracker. No pack loyalty, no political angle, took payment in cash, delivered files on a flash drive and never spoke of a job again. I sent him a message from my personal account, the one Kellan had never seen, the one I had quietly opened in my own name the year I made Beta.

I gave him two names. Emelia Harrison. Kellan Thomas. I gave him one week.

He answered in eleven minutes. Understood.

The sun came up gray over the eastern ridge. I stood at my window and watched it, and I built my face for the day.

Dawn training. Beta briefing. Breakfast.

Kellan came down the stairs in a soft gray Henley, sleep still in his hair, and crossed the kitchen like a man who lived here. He kissed the top of my head. His hand settled warm on my shoulder. He smelled like cedar and rain and something underneath I had never let myself name.

"Morning, gorgeous," he said.

He held my eyes a second too long. He always did. I had written about it in my journal eighteen months ago and then made myself stop noticing.

I smiled up at him. Soft. Easy. The smile of a mate who has noticed nothing.

"Morning," I said, and passed him the coffee.

Across the table, my mother poured juice for Emelia. The moonstone was tucked under her sweater now. I could still feel exactly where it hung.

One week, I thought. Eat your breakfast, Kellan. Lean into my hair. Tell me you love me through the mind-link tonight.

You have one week left in this house.

You just don't know it yet.