Ordering the Lycan Princess to Kneel? novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Law

The Council calls it silver trickery, but the old beta quotes the law: a wolf who commands a royal owes her a year. Elowen sets her terms, and overhears the Council head tell the Alpha she cannot be allowed to stay.

The white wolf faded behind me, and the silver lines went out of my arm one by one.

My knees nearly went with them.

Dashiell got to his feet slowly, with wine dripping from his cuff.

He took a step toward me, and his hand came up.

"Don't," I said.

It came out in my own voice this time, small and cracked, and he stopped where he was.

All around the hall, wolves rose from the floor, white-faced, avoiding each other's eyes.

Nobody sat down.

"Trickery," said a woman's voice.

Honora Crewe came through the crowd from table two with her silver hair pinned low and her hands folded.

She was the head of the Council, and Lavinia's mother, and she had never raised her voice in my hearing.

"Silver in the candles, perhaps," she said pleasantly. "A kitchen girl with a trick. We have all been fooled tonight, Alpha."

"I was not fooled," Dashiell said.

His voice was rough.

"Nobody in this room was. Two hundred wolves went down."

"Two hundred wolves were frightened."

"Alpha," said the old beta, Aldous Greer, "may I speak the law?"

He was leaning on his cane by the hearth, and he did not look frightened at all.

He seemed glad to be asked.

"Speak it," Dashiell said.

"When a royal's No is spoken in anger, the wolf who gave the order owes her a year. He answers to her in front of his people, and he does not refuse her. That is the oldest law we have."

"Her?" Honora said. "She is a waitress."

"She is the one who said No, Lady Crewe. Every wolf in this room felt it."

Honora's smile did not move.

Lavinia stood up beside her mother then, pale and lovely, with the red stain down her gown.

"Mama, please," she said. "Let's not fight tonight. I think Elowen is as shocked as we are."

She took my hand and squeezed it.

I let her, because I did not know what else to do, and because her fingers were cold.

"A year," I said.

The hall turned to me.

My voice shook, but I kept going.

"If that's the law, I have terms."

"You have terms," Dashiell repeated.

"I carry my own tray until the Council rules on me. Nobody moves me out of the kitchen. Nobody sends me away."

I looked straight at him.

"And you answer to me in public. In front of the pack. Whatever I ask."

His throat moved.

"In public," he said.

"And you don't touch me in private. Not once."

Someone near the doors gasped, and Aldous coughed to cover a laugh.

"Agreed," Dashiell said.

He said it so fast that Honora's eyebrows rose.

She gave the hall a little nod, and the Council elders began to murmur and go.

I do not remember walking to the kitchen.

I remember the steel door, and the hum of the freezers, and Fenn pulling me down onto an upturned crate.

"Breathe," he said. "You're the color of flour."

"I think I'm still in shock."

"You were enormous." He crouched in front of me with the dish towel still in his hand. "That wolf was taller than my stove. I've cooked for that man for four years and I've never seen him lose a staring contest."

A laugh got out of me that was half a sob.

"I told the Alpha of Ironwood not to touch me."

"I heard. The whole hall heard. I think Aldous is going to frame it."

He pushed the little brown bottle across the counter toward me.

I stared at it.

I did not want to drink it.

I could not have said why.

"Later," I said, and Fenn shrugged and slid it back.

Then I heard Honora's voice, thin and clear, coming down the old dumbwaiter shaft from the Alpha's office above.

Fenn lifted a finger to his lips.

We crept to the shaft together.

"She is wolfless, Dashiell," Honora was saying. "My daughter's crown cannot be shared with a servant, and you know the alliance depends on it."

"Aldous says the law is the law."

"Then keep her quiet. Have her gone before the full moon, gently, and I will forgive tonight."

There was a long silence.

"And if I won't?" Dashiell said.

Honora's voice dropped.

"Then the Council withdraws from Ironwood, and your pack stands alone for the first winter in a hundred years."

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