Never Reject a Wolf Princess novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Tower

Fevered and stripped of her circlet, Elowen refuses to accept the rejection while her uncle seizes the regency, and Highcrest's horns ask for her by name.

The fever came before they finished carrying my father out of the hall.

It started in my wrist and ran up my arm.

By the time the guards walked me to the north tower, my teeth were chattering in the middle of summer.

They took my circlet from the table and did not give it back.

I heard what happened next from the stairwell, because wolves hear through stone.

My father had collapsed on the dais with his hand on his chest, and the healers had carried him to his bed.

By nightfall my uncle Osric had signed himself Lord Regent.

By midnight my cousin Catriona was wearing my silver circlet at the high table.

I lay on the cot in the tower room with a wet cloth on my forehead and counted the stones in the ceiling.

Every time my heart beat, the black mark on my wrist burned.

A rejected mate carries the half-cut thread until she answers it.

There are only five words for the answer, and every child in Dunmarrow knows them.

I accept your rejection.

Say them, and the bond snaps clean, and the fever stops, and the wolf in your chest stops screaming.

I had known that since I was seven.

I lay there and did not say them.

Garran came at dusk, with a tray and a jug of water.

He was the sergeant of the gate, fifty-two years old, bald as an egg, with a white moustache you could hide a mouse in.

He had taught me to ride when I was five and had never once let me win a race.

"They sent me because I'm the only one who'll look you in the face," he said.

He set the tray down and did not look me in the face.

"Say it, then," I said.

"Say what, Highness?"

"That I'm a fool."

"I'll say you're burning up and you should drink."

He poured water into a cup and held it while my hands shook too hard to take it.

I drank half and spilled the rest down my chin.

"Has anyone seen my father?" I said.

"Not since the healer took him. Lord Osric's man stands at the door."

"Of course he does."

Garran bent to straighten the blanket, and his voice dropped.

"Highness, if you say the words, it stops hurting. Nobody would think less of you."

"Brogan would think I was beaten."

"Brogan is a pup who never stood a day of real watch in his life," Garran said.

I laughed, and it turned into a cough.

Footsteps came on the stairs, light and quick, and Garran stood up.

Catriona swept in without knocking.

She was twenty-five, pale and pretty, with honey-colored ringlets pinned high.

My circlet sat on her forehead as if it had always lived there.

"Cousin," she said, and she smiled. "You look dreadful."

"It suits the room," I said.

She laughed, the same bright laugh she used at funerals.

"Father sent me to see you were comfortable. He wants you to be sensible about all this."

"Sensible."

"He has a quiet match arranged for you. A lord in the far south, an old man, very kind."

"You'd keep your name and your lands and never see this court again."

I looked at her for a long moment.

"And Brogan?" I said.

"Oh, Brogan is to be Captain-General." She touched the circlet. "And we're to be married at the Wolf Moon."

The fever went through me again, but it was not only the fever now.

"He told you that before or after he rejected me?" I said.

Her smile slipped for half a breath.

"Before," she said. "Obviously."

She looked pleased with herself.

I looked at her, and I did not feel small.

That surprised me more than anything else that day.

"Tell my uncle I'm not sensible," I said. "Tell him I'm not going south, and I'm not saying the words."

"You'll burn," Catriona said.

"Then I'll burn in my own country."

She tilted her head.

"We'll see how long that lasts."

She swept out, and the door shut hard.

Garran waited until her steps faded.

"That was either very brave or very stupid, Highness," he said.

"I'm told it's the same thing in this family."

"I'll bring broth in the morning." He stopped at the door. "Not a word to anyone that I said Brogan was a pup."

"Your secret's safe."

He nodded and was gone.

I lay in the dark with the tray cooling beside me.

I did not sleep.

Sometime after the second bell, the horns started.

They were long, low calls from the south, the kind that carried over the whole valley.

Not Dunmarrow's horns.

I dragged myself to the window and gripped the sill.

Down below, on the road to the Ford of Dun, a line of torches wound through the dark.

The horns blew again.

Down in the courtyard, a herald was shouting up to the walls.

"Highcrest asks parley with the Princess Elowen Ashgrove," he cried. "By name, and no one else."

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