Leaving My Alpha Husband in Ice Cold Regret novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: What the Ice Takes

On Frost Lake Neve names her husband, steps into the black hole, the bond tears and his wolf howls up through the ice, and a bare human hand closes on her wrist.

Frost Lake was a mile from the pack hall, and the whole pack walked it behind me in the snow.

Nobody carried a torch.

The moon was nearly full, and it lit the lake.

I walked in front in my grey wool coat, with my grandmother's silver comb holding back my hair.

Lucan walked behind me, and I heard every step.

He had stopped begging at the hall door.

Now he only breathed, hard and ragged.

At the shore a cabin stood with one yellow window.

Beside it, a figure in a heavy parka waited at the edge of the ice with a coil of rope over one shoulder.

Silver hair, blowing loose past his collar.

He didn't greet anyone.

The old herbalist who had sat up so straight in the hall came forward on a hunter's arm.

She was past eighty, small as a child in her black shawl.

"The Warden has cut the ring," she told the pack. "It is done as it was done. Nobody speaks until the caller is under."

Then she looked at me.

"Last chance, girl. Say the word and we go home."

"I know where home is," I said. "I'm not going back to it."

She nodded once.

I stepped onto the ice.

It held, thick as a table and black as glass, and the cold came up through my boots.

Forty steps out, a ring had been cut into the lake, wide as a doorway.

The water inside it was darker than the night.

It steamed a little in the freezing air.

I stopped at the rim.

Behind me, sixty people stood on the shore and did not make a sound.

I turned around so they could see my face.

I found Delphine in the crowd, standing close to Ilse with her hands pressed to her mouth, looking sorry.

I found Bess in her green parka, one hand on her round belly, tears running openly down her cheeks.

She lifted her chin at me.

Do it, said her whole body.

Then I found my husband.

He stood alone at the shoreline, with a clear yard of snow around him where nobody would stand.

"Lucan Harrow," I said.

My voice carried over the ice the way the old woman had told me it would.

"You swore to me on the night of the Moon, in front of this pack, and you broke it."

"Neve, please." He took one step onto the ice.

The lake boomed.

It was a sound like a door slamming under the world.

A black crack shot out from beneath his boot and ran up between his feet.

He went down hard on both knees.

The old woman called out, "The betrayer does not cross the line!"

Lucan stayed where he fell, palms flat on the ice, staring at the crack.

I turned back to the water.

The words I'd memorized came out of me plainly, in the voice I use to read out dosages.

"Ice, I name him. Lucan Harrow, who broke faith. Take what he broke, and let me go."

My wolf lunged inside me.

She didn't want to go in.

She was shrieking in my head, scrabbling at the walls of my chest, and I put one hand over my heart and told her, quietly, that I was sorry.

Then I stepped off the edge.

The cold was not like cold.

It was a fist.

It closed on every inch of me at once, and the breath went out of my body in one long white rush.

The dress dragged at my legs.

The water was so dark I couldn't tell which way was up.

Somewhere above me, a long way off, I heard Bess scream.

Then my heart stopped.

I felt it stop.

It was not like fainting.

It was like a clock being put down gently on a shelf.

And then the bond began to tear.

I had thought it would be like pulling a thread.

It was like pulling a root.

Five years of Lucan came out of me strand by strand, his scent and his laugh and his hands in my hair, every Christmas morning and every fight and the first night I let him bite me.

The mark on my neck blazed, and then it burned out.

Through the water, from very far away, I heard him.

Not with my ears.

With the last of the bond, as it frayed.

He was howling.

Not a man's shout, a wolf's howl, huge and wrecked, going on and on.

Then the sound changed.

It came from below me.

It came up through the water from somewhere deep in the lake, a huge pale grief of a voice, and I knew it, because I had slept beside it for five years.

His wolf was in the ice.

It was calling for me.

I couldn't answer.

My eyes were open, and above me the moon was a small silver coin on the far side of the hole.

The water went quiet.

The last thread snapped.

I didn't feel it.

I didn't feel anything.

Then something broke the surface of the dark above me and reached down, long and fast, with no hurry in it at all.

A bare human hand closed around my wrist.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend