The Exiled Alpha Is My Second Chance Mate novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Terms

Thirty wounded rogues fill the yard, Dilys sets her terms with the exile and a kiss in the supply room goes too far for a second before she stops it, as torches appear on the road.

At dawn a man in flannel walked into my yard with a harmonica in his back pocket and thirty bleeding wolves behind him.

I was on the porch with a mug of tea, because I had been awake for twenty-six hours and no longer believed in sleep.

"Ma'am," the big man said, and swept off a hat he did not own. "I'm told you've got our Alpha."

He had a long dark-blond braid down his back and a belly laugh waiting somewhere behind his mouth.

"Nobody has anybody," I said. "He's in the back, and he is being stubborn on a cot."

"That sounds like him."

"Who are you?"

"Bede Tallis. His second, his oldest friend, and the worst singer on the Bell Ridge." He grinned. "I've been walking since midnight, so I'll be honest, I may cry."

The wolves behind him were quieter than he was.

They had frostbite, broken ribs, and a bullet through a boy's calf.

They wore the grey look of people who had not slept under a roof in weeks.

A woman held her wrist against her chest with the bone sticking out.

None of them had asked me for anything.

That was what undid me.

Silvercrest wolves come to my door and complain about the wait, and these ones stood in the cold and waited to be told no.

"Torquil Dacre says you're a healer who doesn't turn people away," Bede said.

"Torquil Dacre was bleeding on my table when he said it."

I put my mug on the rail.

"I have terms," I said.

Bede's eyebrows went up.

"Inside this building nobody is anyone's soldier. You leave your knives at the door."

"I don't care who your enemy is. I care who is bleeding."

"Fair."

"Second, my patients stay out of it. The Silvercrest wolves who come to me are not collateral."

"Not one of them gets hurt, scared or used for leverage."

"Also fair."

"Third," I said. "You do exactly what I tell you, when I tell you, and you thank me later."

Bede turned his head and called, loudly and cheerfully, toward the cold room, "Torq! She's got terms!"

From inside came a grunt that might have been a laugh.

"Agree to everything," the Alpha of three hundred exiles called back. "I did."

I worked for nine hours.

I set the woman's wrist and reduced a shoulder.

I got the boy's bullet out while Bede held his hand and sang him a song about a truck.

Torquil sat in a chair in the corner with a blanket over his knees, bleeding through his bandage, and refused to go lie down.

"You're torn," I told him at noon.

He said he was fine, and I said lie down or I would sit on him.

By dusk the yard was full of wolves asleep on camp pads in my blankets.

A pot of lentils bubbled on the porch burner.

I ran out of sterile gauze, which happens.

I went into the supply room to find the emergency box I had hidden from myself.

It was a narrow room with steel shelves on both sides and one bare bulb.

Footsteps came in behind me, and the door clicked shut.

"You're supposed to be lying down," I said, without turning around.

"I was lying down. Then you were gone."

His voice was low and close, and every hair on my arms stood up.

I turned.

He was a foot away in the narrow aisle, shirtless under the bandage.

The scar on his neck ran down into the dark hair on his chest.

"I owe you," he said.

"You owe me a bill. I'll send it."

"I owe you more than I know how to say."

"Then don't say it."

His hand came up slowly and settled against the side of my face, calloused, huge, shaking just slightly.

The bond lit so bright I had to close my eyes.

"Dilys," he said.

I had waited three years to be touched by a mate who wanted me.

The one standing in front of me had just walked out of the snow.

I kissed him first.

His mouth was hot and hungry and tasted of tea and iron, and his hand slid into my hair and held on.

He backed me into the shelves, and a box of syringes hit the floor.

I slid both hands over his ribs, and he made a sound into my mouth that went straight down my body.

"Careful," I said against his lips. "You have thirty stitches."

"Then you'll fix them."

His hips pressed into mine, hard and plain, and my knees went.

He lifted me against the shelving, and I wrapped a leg around his hip and bit his lip.

For a long moment there was no clinic and no Silvercrest, only the bond pulling both of us under.

Then I thought of Maddock's face saying, I reject you.

I put my palm against Torquil's chest and pushed.

He stopped at once, breathing hard, with his forehead against mine.

"Not like this," I said. "Not because the Moon said so."

"No," he said. "Not like that."

"I don't know you."

"That's fair." His thumb brushed my lower lip. "I'll wait until you do."

I was still trying to remember how to breathe when Bede's boots hammered down the hall.

The door flew open without a knock.

"Torq," Bede said, white-faced. "Dilys. Torches on the road."

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