I Married the Alpha They Threw Away novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Hunter's Eve

I sat down on the cloakroom bench beside her, among the coats.

"Say that in the hall," I said. "In front of the council."

Sienna laughed, a short broken sound.

"And then what?"

"She smiles and says I'm a jealous girl with wine on my dress. And a month from now I fall down the stairs."

"I'll stand next to you."

"You?" She looked at me. "Two weeks ago you couldn't look me in the eye at the market."

"Two weeks ago I didn't know what I was."

Her eyes dropped to my collar, where the ring lay.

Then the butler's voice called her name from the hall.

She got up, smoothed her ruined dress, and went back to Corbin without another word.

Bram drove us home around the black lake.

I didn't say anything for a long time.

Mother was right, he'd said in July, and then one pup was all there was.

Imogen had known what my baby would be before I'd ever conceived her.

She'd planned the whole year down to that dawn in July.

"Say it," Bram said quietly.

"She didn't just let him do it," I said. "She told him to."

He reached across the cab and took my hand, and held it the rest of the way.

The night before the Hunter's Moon was clear and cold, with frost already on the woodpile at dusk.

Bram stood in the yard in his shirtsleeves while the whole camp watched from the porches.

He didn't clench his fists this time.

He looked at me, and breathed out, and simply went.

The black wolf stood in the frost where he'd been.

He was huge, bigger than any wolf I'd ever seen, with the black-veined scar showing pale through the fur of his chest.

He shook himself, and turned in a slow circle, and stayed.

A minute.

Two.

The one-eyed man stood up out of his lawn chair.

"Well," he said roughly. "About time."

The young man with the leg brace whooped and banged a pot with a spoon.

I walked out across the frost and put my hand into the thick fur of his neck.

He leaned his whole weight against my legs and nearly knocked me down.

Then he went back, and it was Bram on his knees in the frost, laughing up at me.

"Did you see?"

"I saw."

"I held it." He got up, grinning like a boy. "I held it."

The widow had made a venison pie for the night before the fight.

We ate it at the long plank table with all twelve of them crammed along the benches.

The young man with the brace told the story of Bram fixing the camp generator and setting his own beard on fire.

"It was a small fire," Bram said.

"You were screaming."

"It was a small scream."

The one-eyed man stood up at the end and lifted his tin cup.

"Six years ago," he said, "they threw out the boy and kept the rot. Tomorrow we find out who was right."

Everyone drank to that.

The widow cried a little into her pie and pretended it was pepper.

Afterward, Bram and I washed the dishes side by side at the sink.

He was quiet.

"You're scared," I said.

"Not of him."

He set a plate in the rack.

"I can hold my wolf for two minutes. Corbin's held his since he was eighteen."

"He's quick, and he fights dirty." He stopped. "If I lose tomorrow, they give you back."

"You won't lose."

"You don't know that."

"I know he fights dirty," I said. "So I'll be watching his feet."

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