My Alpha Chose Her, So I Let Him Bury Me novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Kettle River

Morven wakes in a river wolf's lodge with her ribs bound and her baby alive, and refuses to go back. A scout reports that Felicity has already moved into the Luna's room wearing the moonstone necklace.

I woke up in a wooden bed under a quilt that smelled like cedar and woodsmoke.

My ribs were wrapped so tight I could only breathe in sips.

My right hand lay on a folded towel, four fingers splinted flat and the thumb sticking out.

My other hand was already on my belly.

Nothing moved.

"Easy," said a woman's voice.

An old healer with a gray braid sat on a stool beside the bed, holding a hollow wooden horn.

"Here. Listen."

She pressed the wide end to my stomach and the narrow end to my ear.

For a long second there was only my own pulse.

Then, underneath it, fast and small, came a second one.

I put my good hand over my mouth.

"A hundred and sixty," the healer said. "That's a strong boy. He's been kicking the whole time you slept, and he kicked me twice."

I laughed, and it turned into a sob, and the sob hurt my ribs.

"Four broken fingers, three cracked ribs, a lot of river in your chest," she said. "Nothing that won't mend. The fingers will mend crooked. I'm sorry for that."

"I don't care about the fingers."

"You will. Not today."

The door opened and the room got smaller.

Bram MacNaughton ducked under the frame, because he had to.

He had changed into dry clothes, a gray shirt with the sleeves shoved up over forearms as thick as my calves.

Copper-brown hair, a short beard, and those eyes.

In the dim lodge they were gold all the way through.

"Awake," he said. "Good."

"Where am I?"

"Kettle River Lodge. Four miles below Wolf Creek Falls." He pulled a chair around and sat on it backward, which made it look like a toy. "You've slept eleven hours."

"Eleven hours." I tried to sit up.

The healer put a firm hand on my shoulder.

"Not yet."

"My phone," I said. "I need to call my..."

I stopped.

Call who?

Cormac was the only number I had ever needed.

"Your phone is at the bottom of my river," Bram said. "I found your shoe on the gravel bar and a piece of blue cloth in a willow. That's all the river gave back besides you."

"Did anyone come looking?"

"A pack patrol came to the edge of our land at dusk. They stood at the border and called a name that wasn't yours."

My throat tightened.

"What name?"

"Felicity."

I closed my eyes.

When I opened them he was still watching me, steady, not softening it.

I liked that, and it surprised me.

"Why did you pull me out?" I asked. "You don't know me. I'm an Ironwood wolf. You could have let me go by."

"I was fishing under the falls. I heard a woman scream and then I saw a woman fall." His jaw moved. "Then I saw a man on the bank who never looked at the water. That bothered me more than the screaming."

"He's my husband."

"I know." He said it flatly. "I felt the bond snap when I had you by the wrist. It went through you like a bolt."

I did not want to talk about the bond.

"What happens now?" I said instead.

"The old river law is that anyone I pull out alive is under my protection for a year and a day. Nobody takes you from my land. Not an Alpha, not a pack, not a husband."

"Your pack won't mind?"

"My pack voted on that law before I was born." One corner of his mouth lifted. "They'll mind that you're pregnant and stubborn. They'll like you anyway."

I almost smiled.

Then I thought of the Ironwood doctor, who answered to Cormac, and of the elders, who answered to him too.

"If I go back," I said slowly, "he'll have his son."

"Under your law, yes. An heir born in a mate bond belongs to the Alpha's pack."

"Then I'm not going back."

"Good." Bram stood. "The healer says you're to stay in bed three days. I say if you try to stand up I'll carry you back, and I won't ask."

"You wouldn't."

"I once carried an elk four miles uphill."

The healer snorted into her sleeve.

I stared at the ceiling beams until I could trust my face.

"Does it always hurt this much," I said, "when somebody stops loving you?"

Bram did not answer right away.

"I don't know," he said at last. "I've never loved anyone who needed to be hit to let go of me."

My chest tightened, not unkindly.

A young man with a river scout's armband knocked on the open door.

He didn't look at me.

He looked at Bram.

"Alpha. The Ironwood bridge watchers say it's true."

"Say it in front of her."

The scout swallowed.

"They're holding her funeral tomorrow at noon. And the omega, Felicity Rainey, moved into the Luna's room last night. She's wearing the moonstone necklace."

The moonstone necklace was Cormac's mother's.

It had hung in the Alpha house for twenty years.

He had never once put it on my neck.

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