The Alphas Broken Mate novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Third Night

Before forty warriors, Lark refuses to hide and the Alpha refuses to mark her. When the first men reach for her she makes the one sound she has left, and every wolf in the hall drops to their knees. The healer says her mother had that voice.

I held up my arms, and Caius lifted me again.

"You don't have to go in there," he said against my hair.

I shook my head, and I wrote on the slate with the chalk stub in my fist.

*Not hiding.*

He read it, and something in his chest rumbled that I felt through my ribs.

"Then I carry you in," he said. "And I'll be at your shoulder."

The great hall of Blood Moon had a ceiling lost in smoke and torches down both walls.

Forty men stood in a half circle at the far end, all in black cloaks lined in red.

They went silent when the doors opened.

Caius set me on a high stool on the dais and stood at my left, one hand on the back of the stool, not on me.

Osric came up the aisle behind us and stopped at the foot of the dais.

He unrolled a sheet of old vellum and read from it in a clear voice.

"An omega sent in tribute belongs to the unmated warriors after the third night," he said. "Unless the Alpha marks her before the hall. Those are the words."

He rolled it up again.

"Alpha, will you mark her?"

I looked at Caius.

He looked back, and I saw him choose.

"No," he said, loud enough for the back wall. "She told me not to, so I will not."

The hall rumbled.

A big man with a scar across his nose stepped out of the line.

"Then it's the law, Alpha," he said. "Three years we've kept it, and you've never once stood in the way."

"I was not here," Caius said. "I am here now."

"You're our Alpha," the scarred man said. "You do not get to choose which law you keep."

"Draw the lots," Osric said, almost gently.

Caius's eyes went gold.

I felt the change in the stool under my hand, a hum in the wood, and I knew he would kill forty of his own men on this floor and never look away.

He would do it because of me.

I did not want forty dead men on my slate.

Two of them were already walking toward me, with their hands out.

One of them smiled.

I thought of Thornfield, and of the knife, and of Edda's cup.

I thought: not again.

I had no tongue, and no voice to name a single thing.

But I still had a throat, and it still worked, and I opened my mouth and I made the only sound I had left.

It was not a word.

It was not even a scream, not at first.

It started low in my chest and climbed, a long cracked note that rang off the stone and went out through every door in the hall.

The torches leaned flat.

The two men reaching for me dropped and hit the floor on their knees.

Then the line went down behind them.

Forty warriors went to their knees all at once with their hands pressed to the flagstones, gasping, and the scarred man had tears on his face.

A cup rolled off the table at the aisle and rang on the floor.

Caius sank to one knee on the dais with his hand still on the stool.

He did not look afraid.

He looked at me with his mouth open.

I held the note until my throat bled and I could not hold it any more.

Then I stopped, and the hall went silent.

Nobody moved.

At the foot of the dais, Osric was the last man down.

I saw him go.

One hand gripped the edge of the table, and his jaw was tight, and his ring struck the stone as he finally dropped.

He got up first, too.

He smoothed his cloak, and his face went smooth and grave again before I could be sure of what I had seen.

The warriors began to get up one at a time, not looking at me.

The scarred man stayed on his knees longest.

"Forgive us," he said to the floor. "We did not know."

"Does anyone else want to draw lots?" Caius said.

His voice carried to the back of the room.

Nobody answered him.

"Then the rite is over," he said. "This woman is under my roof and my protection. She will not be touched, and she will not be sold."

He looked at the scarred man and added, softer, "And you will tell the rest of the pack in the morning what you saw."

The man bowed, deeper than before.

Caius lifted me down off the stool.

I was shaking so hard the splints knocked against his arm.

"I've got you," he said, and I let him.

He carried me out through the side door into a stone passage, and I turned my face against his shoulder where I had stabbed him.

I smelled pine smoke, and blood, and my own tears.

Bryony was waiting at the end of the passage with her arms folded over her apron.

She looked at Caius, and then at me, and her face had lost its color.

"Put her down on the bench," she said. "Gently."

Caius did, and stayed crouched by my knees.

"What was that?" he said. "What did she do?"

Bryony did not answer him.

She took my chin in her hand and turned my face toward the lamp, and she looked at me for a long time.

"That was no omega's cry," she said. "I have heard it once before in my life."

She let go of my chin.

"Your mother had that voice, girl," Bryony said. "I thought it died with her in the Ellery valley."

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