The Rejected Luna's Revenge novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Charter

Nan feeds her and says her wolf has been held down. Rafe brings the charter showing MacShane Ridge reverts to her, and the Brocklehursts have already posted guards on its gate.

Nan Prewitt opened her cottage door in a flannel nightgown, with a kitchen knife in one hand.

She looked at Demelza, soaked and bareheaded under a man's canvas coat, and put the knife down on the hall table.

"Get in here," Nan said.

The village sat in a hollow below Brocklehurst Hall, and the cottage was the last house on the lane.

Inside, it smelled of onions and woodsmoke.

Nan sat her down at the kitchen table and set a pot on the stove without asking a single question.

Demelza held her hands out over the steam and watched them.

They were still warm. She turned them over twice.

"Give me your wrist," Nan said.

Nan had been the Brocklehurst healer for thirty years, and she took a pulse the way other people read a clock.

She held it for a full minute and frowned.

"Slow and steady. Strong." Nan let go. "When did you last feel warm?"

"Tonight. When he said it."

"Not before?"

"Not since last autumn."

Nan said a word Demelza had never heard her say, and went to stir the pot harder than the pot needed.

"Your mother made me promise to watch you," Nan said. "I watched you shake in that Hall for a year and told myself it was the grief."

"It was probably the grief."

"Grief doesn't make a wolf's hands go cold." Nan ladled soup into a bowl. "And your wolf isn't quiet, honey. Nobody ever has a quiet wolf. She's been sat on."

"By who?"

"I don't know yet. Eat."

Demelza ate. It was chicken and barley, and she finished the bowl without noticing.

A truck came up the lane slowly and stopped outside.

A moment later someone knocked, twice, politely.

Nan opened it, and Rafe Kincaid ducked under the lintel with rain in his black hair.

He had a steel thermos in one hand and a cardboard tube in the other.

"I waited by the gate until your light came on," he said to Demelza. "I didn't want to leave you walking."

"I didn't ask you to wait."

"No." He looked at the empty hook where his coat should have been, then at her shoulders. "Keep it. I have another in the truck."

Nan pulled out a chair for him, and he sat in it.

He set the tube on the table.

"Two weeks ago, Hoyt's lawyer wrote to my pack's archivist," he said. "He asked for a copy of the MacShane charter."

"My family's charter?"

"The one that gave MacShane Ridge to the Brocklehursts when you were betrothed." He pulled out a roll of old paper and flattened it under the sugar bowl. "I read it before I sent it. It has a clause he'd have liked me not to notice."

He put one scarred finger on a line of faded ink.

"If the bond ends by the Alpha's word, the Ridge goes back to the MacShane heir. If the bond ends by hers, it stays with the Brocklehursts."

Demelza read the line twice.

"I didn't know," she said.

"I know you didn't."

"I wasn't trying to be clever. I just wasn't going to say it for him."

"I watched you." The corner of Rafe's mouth moved, once. "Nobody in that room had ever seen you say no."

"Neither had I," Demelza said.

Nan made a sound that might have been a laugh.

There was a quick rap on the window, and then the door.

A boy of about fifteen stood on the step, in a Brocklehurst pack jacket, holding a folded coat and a note.

"From Miss Daphne," he said, and ran before Nan could reach him.

The coat was Daphne's good green wool. The note was in her round, careful hand.

*Mel, I'm so sorry. Please wear this, you'll catch your death. Come to the Hall tomorrow and we'll talk. Hoyt only wants things to be easy. Nothing has to change for you. I'll make the tea.*

Demelza read it once and put it down on the table.

Nan read it upside down and snorted.

"Nothing has to change," Nan said. "He's thrown you out of the house."

Demelza said nothing.

She ran her thumb over the paper, and her thumb was warm.

"Rafe," she said. "What happens to the Ridge?"

He unrolled the next line of the charter with a patient finger.

"The heir has to stand on the land at first light after the bond ends. Barefoot or booted, it doesn't matter. Then the Ridge is hers on the Council's record."

"Then I'll stand on it at first light."

"It's four hours away." Rafe took a breath. "There are thirty guards at the Ridge gate."

Demelza looked up.

"The Ridge only goes back to her when he ends the bond," Nan said slowly. "Why post guards before he'd said a word?"

"He posted them yesterday," said Rafe. "Before he even came home."

"He knew what ending it would hand her," said Nan.

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