Rejected in Labor: The Lycan King's Stolen Daughter novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Rogue at the Gate
The rogue gives Miriam his coat and says her name, and when Harlan and the elders come to take the pups he says she is his sister; then the door of the last truck opens.
The rogue stopped three steps away and held both hands out where I could see them.
He kept them open and low.
"Please don't run," he said. "Not this time."
I pulled the babies tighter against my chest.
My feet had gone numb in the snow, and blood was running down the inside of my leg.
"You grabbed me at the border," I said. "A woman I trusted took a picture of it, and now I've been thrown out of my own pack because of you."
His face changed.
"Who took a picture?"
"My sister."
He didn't answer.
He took off his black coat and stepped in close, slowly, and wrapped it around me and both babies at once.
It was heavy and warm and smelled like cedar and cold air.
"My name is Torren," he said. "I'm sorry I frightened you. I had one chance to reach you, and I did it badly."
"Reach me for what?"
He looked at the coin on its cord at my throat.
His eyes stayed on it for a long moment.
"Put your hand around it," he said. "Please."
I did.
The silver wolf was warm, though I had been out in the cold for ten minutes.
Behind me, boots hit the snow at a run.
I turned.
Harlan Hesketh came down the road from the pack house with four wolves in a line behind him.
Dalton walked at the back of them with his head down.
"Miriam Averill," Harlan called. "You will return the pups to the infirmary. You have no right to carry pack children off pack land."
Torren stepped between us.
He didn't raise his voice.
"She's going nowhere with her hands empty," he said. "Who are you?"
"Harlan Hesketh, senior elder of Cold Fork. And you are a stranger on our road."
"I'm the man standing next to her."
One of Harlan's wolves took a step forward, and four of the men from the black trucks moved up beside Torren without being told.
The wolves stopped.
Harlan's mouth thinned.
"Those pups were born on Cold Fork ground to a Cold Fork female," he said. "Her mate has renounced them, and Cold Fork law is clear. A child with no father belongs to the pack."
"Then the pack can keep the father who left them," Torren said. "She's my sister."
Nobody spoke.
I stared at the back of his head.
"I don't have a brother," I said.
"You have a brother," he said, without turning around. "And a father who is very close, and who has not slept in twenty-six years."
My knees almost went.
Torren caught my elbow without looking, and held me up.
"That's a lie," Harlan said. "Averill found her at the river as a baby. She has no family but the one who raised her."
"Then you know where she was found," Torren said. "That's useful."
Harlan's eyes flicked away.
It was only a flick, but I saw it.
Dalton lifted his head for the first time since the infirmary.
He looked at Torren.
He looked at the coat around my shoulders, and the way Torren's hand held my arm.
His face went hard.
"So that's your brother," he said. "Is that what we're calling him now?"
"Dalton," Torren said quietly. "You are the man who told her in front of her whole pack that her word was worth nothing. I would be very careful what you say to her next."
Dalton took a step toward me.
Two of the men from the trucks drew their coats back, and I saw what they carried.
He stopped.
I couldn't stop shaking, and my daughter cried against my collarbone.
"I told you the truth about him," I said to Dalton. "You wouldn't give me a test. You wouldn't even look at me."
He opened his mouth.
Behind Torren, down the line of black trucks, the door of the last one opened.
It made a flat, heavy sound in the snow.
Every man at the trucks went down on one knee at the same moment, and bowed his head.
Torren went down with them.
He let go of my arm to do it, and I nearly fell.
A man stepped down from the cab and stood in the road with his hands at his sides.
He was tall, and his hair was black with silver at the temples, and he wore half of a silver coin on a chain at his chest.
He was looking at me.
His eyes had gone silver, and they were wet.
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