My Alpha Killed Our Pup for His Pregnant Mistress novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Moonrise

Margo hands Fern a gift at the car, then the bond tears out of her on the road, and her wolf starts talking to a stranger.

I had one foot in Kurt Kingscote's car when Margo came running down the gravel path with my coat.

"Fern, wait!"

She was out of breath, with one hand pressed to her stomach.

She held out the coat, my gloves and a small round tin.

"You left it all. It's freezing, and you're still shaking."

I took the coat because my teeth were chattering.

"I made you a fresh batch of the salve," she said. "Your hands are cracking. Keep using it, please."

"Why are you being kind to me?" I said.

Her eyes filled again.

"Because you were my sister for five years," she said. "Torin will come around. He's just proud."

She squeezed my hand, left the tin in it, and ran back toward the house.

I put the tin in my coat pocket and shut the door.

Kurt looked at the pocket, then at the road, and pulled out without a word.

He drove with both hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road.

I watched the pines go by and tried not to think about my knees.

At the last Gathering I had stood next to Torin and the whole valley had howled for him.

Last night, while I knelt on the stone, this man had stood at the back of the yard with his arms folded.

He had never once crossed it.

I filed that away where I could find it later.

"You didn't stop him," I said.

"No," said Kurt.

"Why not?"

"Because I'd have had to fight him for you in front of two hundred wolves."

"You'd have become a prize between two Alphas instead of a Luna walking out on her own."

"He'd have kept you on that stone out of spite."

It was a flat, careful answer, and I couldn't tell if it was an excuse.

"You signed the writ, though," I said.

"I'd sign it again. Twice."

"Why do you care?"

"Torin moved his border markers twice this year without asking me," he said. "I don't like what he takes without asking."

I looked at him.

He didn't look back, and that was the whole answer.

The bridge over the river came up out of the trees.

It was a long iron span with the brown water loud underneath.

The dashboard clock said nine thirty-nine.

"One minute," Kurt said.

"I know."

I laid both hands flat on my thighs and braced my feet.

I had read about it once in the Elders' archive, in a single dry paragraph.

It said the cut was quick and that the wolf who cut it should expect to be sick afterward.

At nine-forty the thin pale moon cleared the ridge, and the bond tore.

It didn't feel like a thread being cut.

It felt like a long iron nail being drawn out of the center of my chest, slowly, through bone.

I screamed.

Kurt said my name, once, and the car swerved onto the shoulder and stopped.

I folded forward with my forehead on the dashboard.

Five years of Torin's presence went out of me, the faint warm hum I had never noticed because it never stopped.

His voice in the back of my head, the one that said where he was and when he'd be home, went silent.

Sorrel threw herself against my ribs and howled.

Then the pain stopped, all at once.

Everything was very quiet.

I sat up slowly, wiping my face with my sleeve.

The car smelled of pine and warm leather, and I could hear the river, and something else.

A big, steady heartbeat that wasn't mine.

"Fern," Kurt said. His voice had gone odd. "Don't move yet."

"Why?"

He had both hands in his lap, very still, and he was looking straight ahead through the windshield.

"Your wolf is standing in my head," he said. "She's asking whether she should bite me."

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