I Cut My Alpha's Bond, So the Lycan King Came Hunting novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: One Cup of Coffee

Mercy Dunlap poured the King of the Lycans a cup of coffee.

She did it with her shotgun resting on the counter, pointed at the napkin dispenser, and she did not spill a drop.

"Road rule," she said. "You sit, I serve. You bleed on my floor, I put you out."

"Understood," Dacre Vaughn said.

He drank a mouthful and set the cup down.

Seven Fourth Company vets watched him and not one of them blinked.

I took the stool two down from his, close enough to hear and far enough to run.

"I counted nine in here," he said, without turning his head. "And a tenth in the cold room, who is asleep, and an eleventh on the roof with a long gun."

"Twelfth," said Mercy. "My cousin's on the lot."

"I'd have been disappointed if you hadn't."

He looked at me.

It was the first time I'd seen him in good light, and I would rather not have.

He was thirty-odd, with hard shoulders and hands too big for the cup.

A stillness about him that the whole room had felt before he spoke.

"Say it," I said. "You didn't come into a diner to drink coffee."

"Nine years ago at the Lowwater parley a man sat down at a table with the Eckert Marshal to sign a treaty," Dacre said. "He wore a black coat. He had no weapon. He raised his right hand to the Marshal, and a bullet took him through the chest at six hundred yards."

I said nothing.

"He was my brother. He was the King."

"I know who he was."

My voice came out steadier than I felt.

"I know," Dacre said. "You were told. I have your roster number, your company and the weight of the round. I did not have your face until the river."

"Then you know I was the shooter."

"I do now."

Mercy shifted her weight behind the counter.

Nobody in the diner spoke.

"I'll tell you what I'd tell your Court," I said. "I was eighteen. I lay on that hill with a sealed order from my Marshal, and it said the Lycan King would give the signal for an ambush. Forty riflemen on the far ridge. The King raised his hand and I took the shot. I thought I was saving my company."

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