Chapter 4: Right Hand

Kjell woke me at dawn with a tray of eggs and a warning.

"Court day," he said, setting it down on the table by the fire.

"Every lord with a grievance comes to the hall."

"Eastmarch will be there, and he talks like a man chewing a boot."

"Does he talk to the Alpha like that?"

"He talks to the Alpha as if the Alpha were deaf. This morning he'll talk to you."

I ate the eggs standing up, because I had learned at Lowmere to eat before somebody took the plate.

Then I put on my mother's grey dress again, pinned the silver wolf at my collar, and went down to the hall.

It was full.

Fifty wolves in good wool stood along the walls, and at the far end, on a stone dais, sat Torin on a plain black chair with no gold on it.

There was no second chair.

I stopped in the doorway, and every head in the hall turned my way.

"That's her," someone muttered.

"The leftover," said a man's voice, pleasantly. "Lowmere's spare."

He stood near the front, a wide man in a fur-trimmed coat with a ring on every finger.

The Lord of Eastmarch had his arms folded, and he was smiling at the crowd.

"Poor girl," he said.

"They send us the one nobody else wanted."

"And the Alpha doesn't even have the manners to seat her."

"Is this what the Treaty of the Pass bought us?"

"A cast-off in a grey rag?"

A few of the courtiers laughed, and my face went warm.

I had heard worse at my own table every night for four years, and I knew exactly what to do with it.

I walked down the center of the hall with my back straight and my chin level.

Halfway to the dais I stopped beside the Lord of Eastmarch.

"My lord," I said, in the careful voice I used for Gudrun's guests. "Your coat is lovely. Is it new?"

Keep reading free with an account. Start The War God Alpha's Arranged Bride from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.