My Ex Regretted Losing Me, But I Already Found My True Alpha novel · Chapter 2 of 16

Chapter 2: The Dress

They laugh off her husband as a rogue, Arthur learns Kendrick hid her letters, and Odette walks out wearing their mother's mating dress.

I pulled my cardigan back up over the mark.

"My husband," I said.

Nobody moved.

Then Kendrick laughed, loud and short.

"Your husband."

"Yes."

"You've been gone three years and you come back with a bite on your shoulder and a husband nobody's met." He looked at Torin.

"Do you hear this?"

Torin didn't answer.

He was still looking at the place where the mark had been.

"What pack?" Kendrick said.

"Nordfjell."

"Never heard of it," he lied.

Every Alpha in the north had heard of Nordfjell.

He just couldn't imagine his little sister anywhere near it.

Odette recovered first.

She slipped her arm through Torin's and tilted her head.

"That's so sweet, Juno. Really. Is he nice? Does he have a job?"

"He works a lot," I said.

"Where is he, then?" Kendrick said. "Why isn't your husband carrying your bag?"

"He had meetings. He'll come for the party."

"The party," Kendrick repeated.

He stepped close enough that I had to tip my head back.

"Listen to me. On Saturday the High Alpha of the Northern Council walks into our hall. Do you understand what that means for me?"

"You get Grandpa's seat."

"I get Grandpa's seat."

"And I'm not having some rogue from the fjords standing in the corner in a rented suit, drinking our wine and embarrassing me."

"He won't embarrass you."

"You already do."

Torin finally spoke.

"A real Alpha doesn't let his mate fly across the world alone," he said. "Whoever he is, he's nobody."

He said it gently.

I picked my suitcase back up.

"I'll take a cab."

"You'll come in my car," Kendrick said, "or you won't set foot in the house."

"Then I'll set foot in Grandpa's room. It's his house."

I walked around him.

Behind me, Odette said in her little voice, "Should I go with her? She shouldn't be alone right now."

"Let her go," Kendrick said. "She'll learn."

The cab cost me two hundred and eleven dollars.

It was worth every cent.

Hollin Lake came up through the pines at dusk, flat and silver, the way it always did in my dreams.

The big stone house sat above the water with every window lit.

There were catering vans in the drive already.

A banner in the hall said HAPPY 80TH, ARTHUR.

The housekeeper saw me and nearly dropped a tray of glasses.

Then a door opened upstairs.

"Juno?"

My grandfather stood at the top of the stairs, holding the rail with both hands.

He was thinner than I remembered.

His cane shook against the step.

I ran up to him.

He held my face in his cold hands and cried.

"You came," he kept saying. "You came. Kendrick said you'd never come."

"Grandpa, I wrote to you. Every month for a year."

He went still.

"I never got a letter."

"I called the house."

"They told me you hung up when I came to the phone." His hands dropped.

"I wrote to you too. I gave the letters to Kendrick to post. He said they came back unopened."

We looked at each other.

Neither of us had to say my brother's name again.

"I thought you hated me," Grandpa whispered. "I was in that hospital bed and you were gone, and I thought I'd done something."

"You didn't do anything."

I held on to him until his breathing slowed.

His skin smelled strange.

Sweet, with something bitter under it.

I told myself it was just his medicine.

"Go wash up," he said at last, patting my hand. "Your room is just how you left it."

It wasn't.

My door had a new brass plate on it that said ODETTE in curling letters.

Inside, my bookshelves were gone.

My mother's quilt was gone.

There was a white vanity where my desk used to be, covered in pink perfume bottles.

Pictures of Odette and Torin were taped around the mirror.

Odette and Torin at the lake.

Odette and Torin at Christmas, with Kendrick's arm around both of them.

I stood in the middle of the room and felt nothing at all.

Then the closet door opened behind me.

"Oh," Odette said. "You're here already."

I turned around.

She must have driven to beat my cab.

She was standing in front of the long mirror, turning her hips so the skirt would swing.

The dress was silver-gray silk, cut low in the back, with tiny seed pearls sewn along the neckline by hand.

I knew every one of those pearls.

My mother had sewn them herself the winter before she died.

She was married in that dress.

She had promised it to me.

Odette smoothed the silk over her stomach and smiled at me in the mirror.

"Kendrick gave it to me," she said. "Isn't it perfect? Torin's going to mark me in it on Saturday."

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