Called Me Used Good? Damn Cheating Alpha Go to Hell with Your Mistress novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Lowry Blood

The registrar reads the stone aloud, Warrick calls it a flaw, and Ronan claims Roxanne as his guest; at the gate he knocks a thermos of poison tea from Vera's hand.

Nobody in the registry hall breathed loudly enough to cover the sound of the stone humming.

The silver light had reached the carved name of the first Luna, at the far end of the table, and stopped there.

The registrar bent over the slab with her needle still in her hand.

"Alpha Dunmoor," she said. "Do you want this read aloud, or shall I read it to you privately?"

"There's nothing to read," Warrick said.

His voice was smooth again. He had gotten it back in the time it took her to ask.

"The stone is four hundred years old," he said. "It has a flaw. It's been flickering for months."

"It has not," the registrar said.

She straightened up and looked at the hall, and at me.

"The stone answers one blood only when it answers like this. It is Lowry blood."

A sound went through the room, and this time it was low and strange.

The old wolves in the front rows had gone still.

An elder near the aisle said, "The Lowrys died out."

"The old Alpha's line ended with a daughter," another said. "She died young."

"She did," said the registrar. "And yet."

I looked down at my thumb.

It had a red bead on it, and nothing else about it was special.

"My name is Wendell," I said.

"Your mother's was not," the registrar said, gently, and that was all she said.

Warrick took one step toward me and lowered his voice.

"Roxanne, you're upset. You've had a shock, and you're not thinking straight."

I looked at the hand he held out.

An hour ago I would have taken it.

"Give me my mother's blessing back," I said.

"It's registry property now, and it's in my safe."

"It's in your coat."

He did not look down at his coat.

That told me more than anything he said next.

"Nash," Warrick said, without turning his head. "Take her home. Gently. She isn't well."

Nash Whitaker, his Beta, stood by the pillar with his heavy arms folded.

He didn't move.

Two guards in Bloodmoon gray came down the aisle instead.

"She's not herself," Vera called out from the third row, her voice thick with tears. "She hasn't been herself since her mate died. Please, everyone. She's grieving."

I turned on her.

"Don't you use him to explain me."

It came out low, and it was the first thing all day that sounded like me.

Vera flinched.

The guards were close now, one on either side.

A man's shadow fell across the stone between us, and then a man stepped out of the gallery onto the floor.

I had seen him twice in my life, at border fairs, a tall gray-eyed man who stood at the edge of rooms and said very little.

Alpha Ronan Hartley of the Ashfang Pack.

He did not look at Warrick.

He looked at the guards, and they stopped where they stood.

"Ashfang law," Ronan said. His voice was quiet and carried anyway. "A guest at a registry may claim any wolf in danger in that hall as his own guest until moonrise. I claim this woman."

His hand settled at the small of my back, light and warm and firm.

Every bone in my spine noticed it.

"This is Bloodmoon business, Hartley," Warrick said.

"Then the stone shouldn't have made it everyone's," Ronan said.

Somebody near the back laughed out loud, and then went quiet fast.

I should have stepped away from that hand.

Instead I stood there, and for the first time since the needle I didn't feel like I was falling.

"Do I have to go with you?" I asked him, low.

"No," he said. "You can go anywhere. I only need them to hear that I said it."

So I chose.

"I'm going to my grandmother's," I said, to the whole hall, in my own voice.

Warrick's jaw worked.

He could have stopped me then, in front of three hundred phones.

He didn't.

I walked down the aisle between the silent rows with my chin up and my thumb bleeding on my good dress.

Ronan walked a step behind me, and not one wolf in the room spoke.

Outside, the sun was too bright.

I got as far as the steps before I heard running behind me.

"Roxy! Roxy, wait!"

Vera caught my arm, panting, her curls coming loose.

She was holding out a steel thermos.

"Please, I'm so sorry, I don't know what's happening, I never wanted it to come out like that." Her eyes were wet. "Just drink this, it'll settle you, I made it fresh."

I stared at the thermos.

It was mint and old pennies, I could smell it already, and my hand was halfway out to take it.

A big hand closed over the thermos and knocked it across the stone.

It hit the steps and burst open, and a brown stream ran down toward my shoes.

Ronan Hartley bent and sniffed the spill, and his face went hard.

"That's not tea," he said. "That's wolfsbane and moon-fern."

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