They Made Me Hunt For My Own Wedding novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: No Touching, No Asking

Sabine wades the Kettle River and hands herself to Garrow Ridge's wardens; their Alpha, Eli Garrow, reads her half-sealed bite, sets his terms, and tells her the site her family named is a bog and that he knows where the true one is.

The Kettle River was low and black, and I waded it up to my knees without stopping.

The cold went straight through my boots.

On the far bank I stood still and counted to ten, so that anyone watching could see I was not sneaking.

Two Garrow wardens stepped out of the pines before I got to six.

They were both big men in grey canvas jackets, and both had their hands open at their sides.

"This is Garrow Ridge land," the taller one said. "State your pack and your business."

"Sabine Corwin," I said. "I'm crossing without leave and I want to be arrested."

The two wardens looked at each other.

"That's new," the shorter one said.

"Take me to your Alpha," I said. "Or the Council's warden, whoever sits in that chair tonight."

"They're the same man," the tall one said, and he took my knife from my belt, very politely.

They walked me up a deer path for twenty minutes, one in front and one behind.

I kept my eyes on the ground and learned the route.

Old habit.

I count turns and I mark smells, and by the time we reached the cabin I could have walked back to the river with my eyes shut.

The cabin sat in a clearing with one lit window and a woodpile as tall as a man.

The door opened before we reached it.

The man who stood there had to duck under the frame.

He was tall, with black hair gone grey at the left temple and a long scar of old burn across his forearm, where his sleeve was rolled to the elbow.

He looked at me for a long time.

The wolf in my chest, which had been silent for twelve years, turned over once.

It was a very small movement, but it was the first.

"Leave us," he said to the wardens, and they went.

"Eli Garrow," he said. "You're in breach of the truce, Miss Corwin."

"I know."

"You walked into my wardens on purpose."

"I know that too."

"Why?"

"Because if I'd waited for them to find me, it would have looked like I was hiding," I said. "I wanted a record that I came to you in the open."

He stepped back and held the door for me.

Inside there was a stove, a table with a map pinned flat, and a pot of coffee that had gone bitter.

He poured me a cup anyway and set it down without a word.

I told him all of it.

The link, the four voices, the moved site, the plan to make me a coward or a criminal by Saturday.

I did not leave out Beau.

I said it plainly, in order, with no tears.

Eli listened with his arms folded, and he never once interrupted.

When I finished he said, "Weeping Ridge is on my side of the line."

"Yes."

"They told you they moved the site to my land."

"They told each other. I wasn't supposed to hear."

"Who else knew?"

"Everyone in that link. My brothers, my sister, my mate." I swallowed. "My father, I think. Dad told me the hunt was Saturday. He stood in the kitchen and said it."

Eli's jaw moved.

"Show me your wrist," he said.

I held out my left arm.

He took it in his hand, very lightly, and turned it palm up.

The half bite was a pale crescent, healed over and never finished.

His thumb rested next to it and did not touch it.

The wolf inside me went still.

It was not afraid.

It was listening.

A low sound came out of Eli's chest, and I did not think he had meant it to.

He let go of my wrist at once.

"That's not a sealed bond," he said, and his voice had gone rough. "That's a bite somebody left open."

"He says the second bite is for the ceremony."

"He says a lot of things." Eli turned to the window with his back to me. "Here are my terms, Miss Corwin."

"Sabine."

"Miss Corwin," he said. "I am the Council's warden on this line. I can't help you break a truce. I can escort a bride on a lawful hunt if she is invited onto my land by its Alpha, and I am inviting you."

"Why?"

"Because the hunt is a law, not a courtesy," he said. "And somebody wrote a trick into it."

"And your price?"

"I walk with you. I do not touch you. And you do not ask me to."

I held out my hand, and he looked at it a second before he shook it, holding only my fingers.

"No touching," I said.

"No asking."

"Done."

His hand was very warm.

I took mine back and put it in my pocket.

"Where is the new site?" I said. "Beau said the standing stones at Weeping Ridge."

"There are no standing stones at Weeping Ridge," Eli said. "That's a bog."

I stared at him.

"They sent you to the wrong place," he said. "They thought you'd never reach the right one, so they didn't bother to check."

"Where is it?"

He turned from the window.

His eyes had changed in the lamplight, from dark brown to something paler.

"The true moon site has not opened for anyone in thirty years," he said. "And I know where it is."

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