The War God Alpha's Arranged Bride novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Not Thrown

Ylva refuses to leave in front of the whole keep, finds the bedridden monster on his feet and unmad, and gets her terms; that night the bar on his door drops from the inside.

I did not go home.

I stood at the bottom of Hartfell's steps with my box in my arms and my mother's brooch cold against my collarbone, and I looked up at the most feared man in Northreach.

"I can't," I said.

"The road is open," Torin said.

"It's open to Lowmere. My stepmother waits at the end of it with the next buyer."

A few of the wolves in the courtyard shifted their feet.

Torin's gold eyes did not leave my face.

"You said you signed," he said.

"I signed it myself, in front of two hundred people. It says free will, and I gave mine."

"They had a knife under it."

"They had a stepmother, which is worse. A knife I could have taken."

Somewhere behind me a wolf made a sound that might have been a laugh and was quickly swallowed.

Torin came down one step.

He moved easily, without a limp, without a hand on the rail, and the cold feeling in my stomach turned to confusion.

Every tavern from Lowmere to the coast said he could not stand.

"Lady Ylva," he said. "I want you to understand what I'm refusing. I will not take a woman who was handed over like a debt."

"You asked for a daughter of Lowmere. I'm the one who came."

"I asked for the Treaty to be honored. I didn't ask for a hostage."

"Then don't take me as a hostage," I said. "Take me as a wife who read the contract."

The courtyard was very quiet.

He looked at the box, then at the brooch, then at my hands, which were not shaking.

I had made sure of that, by holding the iron corners of the box so hard that my fingers hurt.

"Kjell," he said, without turning his head.

An old wolf with a barrel chest and a white beard came limping out of the shadows beside the door.

"I heard it all, my Alpha," Kjell said. "I'd have sent her back too, if I were as big a fool as you."

"Kjell."

"A girl who walks into a wolf keep alone in November, with her family's ledgers under her arm, is not a package."

He peered at me.

"Do you eat meat, girl?"

"I'll eat anything that isn't Gudrun's cooking."

Kjell barked a laugh.

Torin's mouth moved, very slightly, at one corner.

It was gone before I could be sure.

"These are my terms," he said, and he said it to the whole courtyard so no one could claim later that I had been tricked.

"Lady Ylva Marrick of Lowmere may stay as my wife under the Treaty of the Pass."

"She has her own room, with a lock on her side of the door."

"Nothing in this keep is owed to me."

"Not her time, not her company, and not her bed."

My face went hot, all the way to my ears.

"I'm told I'm called the War God," Torin said.

"If you ask what I am, I'm a man who held a pass."

"That is all the Treaty bought, and I will not collect on it."

"And if I want to see the room before I decide?"

"Then you will see it."

"And if the lock is on the wrong side?"

"Then I'll move the lock."

I looked at him for a long moment.

He was thirty-four years old and his hair was already grey, and his forearms under his rolled sleeves were crossed with old pale scars.

He looked at me.

He looked at me.

"All right," I said. "I'll see the room."

Kjell took the box from me before I could object, and I let him.

The keep inside was warm and smelled of woodsmoke and bread.

It was bigger than Lowmere's hall twice over, and everywhere I looked, the wolves had gone back to their business and were pretending very badly not to stare.

A girl carrying a tray whispered to another, "He actually spoke to her."

"Of course he did," the other whispered. "She's his wife."

My room was on the third floor, with a window over the black river, a fire already lit, and a heavy iron key in the lock on the inside.

Kjell put the box on the table and wiped his hands on his coat.

"Whatever you hear tonight, girl, he's not a monster," he said. "Whatever the roads say."

"What would I hear?"

"Eat first. Then ask."

He left, and I sat on the edge of the bed in my mother's grey dress for a long while, listening to the keep settle.

The bed was soft.

The key turned easily.

For the first time in four years, nobody in the house wanted anything from me.

I did not trust it.

I ate the bread and the cold meat that someone had left on a tray, and I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes.

Then I put them back on and opened my father's box.

The ledgers were all there, in his square hand.

Somewhere down the corridor, in the dead middle of the night, I heard an iron bar drop into place.

It came from the room at the end of the hall.

It came from the inside.

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