First Love Jumped So Made Pregnant Me Fall? Alpha Now Your Death Sentence Is My Love Letter novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Back From the Pool

Carys walks into the Hall at dawn alive, and the pack law says the moon has given her back; a grey ring shows on Cade's wrist, and Lydia wakes asking for her.

Rhys kept me in the cave until the sky turned grey.

He had stripped off his shirt as well as his jacket and wrapped both around me, and I sat on the wet rock with my back against his knees and my teeth knocking together.

"You let the chain run slow," I said.

"I let it run slow so you'd have time to reach the lip." His voice was rough. "I didn't think you'd get out of the straps. Nobody has ever gotten out of the straps."

"What did you tell them?"

"Nothing. Godfrey told them." He rubbed his face with both hands. "He said the moon had taken you. He said the light in the water was the moon claiming its own."

"And Cade?"

Rhys didn't answer for a while.

"He stood at the edge for an hour," he said at last. "Nobody could make him move. Then Godfrey sent everyone down to the Hall for the dawn vigil, and he went too."

I put my hand on my stomach.

The baby was awake, and warm, and rolling slowly under my palm.

My wolf was still silent, but this new thing under my ribs was not.

It was steady, and it did not feel afraid.

"Lydia?" I asked.

"Alive. She broke her leg and hit her head on the river rocks, and they carried her to the clinic. She hasn't woken."

I nodded.

I thought about the black in her eyes, and about forty wolves hearing her sob that I had thrown her out.

Then I thought about my husband's hands on the strap.

"I'm not hiding in this cave," I said.

Rhys turned me around by the shoulders to look at me.

"Carys, if Godfrey gets to you first--"

"He won't. I'm going to walk up to the Hall and eat breakfast in front of every single one of them."

He studied my face.

Then he gave a short, startled laugh, and he got his arm under mine and helped me up the back stair.

The Hall's great room smelled of coffee and wet wool.

Sixty wolves sat at the long tables with their heads down for the vigil, and the quiet in the room was heavy.

I walked in through the side door in Rhys's soaked jacket with my hair dripping down my back.

A woman at the nearest table saw me first.

She dropped her cup.

It broke on the floor, and the sound ran through the room, and one head after another turned.

Nobody spoke.

Then Hattie shoved her chair back so hard it fell over.

She came across the floor at a run, in her scrubs, with a wool blanket from the clinic still in her fist, and she wrapped it around me and held on.

"You stupid, stupid, stubborn," she said into my hair. "I stood at the back of that shelf and I couldn't move. I couldn't move, Carys."

"I know."

"I saw the light. I knew it was you."

"I'm all right."

"You are not all right. You're blue."

Behind her, Godfrey rose from the head table.

He leaned on his carved cane, and his face was soft and astonished.

"Child," he said. "The moon has given you back."

"The chain came up empty at dawn," Rhys said, loudly, from the doorway. "I stood at it and I watched it come up. Straps parted, slab empty. And she's standing here."

"Then the moon took her back," said an old woman at the middle table, slowly. "That's the law. If they walk out of the pool, the moon has taken them back."

A low sound rose among the tables.

It was not quite a cheer.

It was a pack deciding which side to be on.

"It is the law," Godfrey said. He smiled at me, kindly. "We'll all thank the moon. Sit, child, sit. Someone bring her tea."

I did not sit.

I stood in the center of the room with Hattie's arm around me and every eye in Stonegate on my belly.

The side door opened behind me.

Cade came in with his shirt stained and his hair standing up, and he stopped three steps inside.

I had never seen anybody go that white.

His eyes went to my face, then to my stomach, then back.

"Carys," he said.

My name came out of him cracked.

"Alpha," I said.

I made it flat and cold, and I watched it land.

He flinched.

His right hand came up to reach for me, and the cuff of his shirt slid back.

A narrow, clean ring of grey skin circled his wrist.

He saw me see it.

He pulled the cuff down fast.

I did not know what it was.

I said nothing, and neither did he.

Then the front door banged, and a boy from the clinic ran in with his chest heaving.

"Alpha!" he gasped. "Lydia's awake. She's asking for Carys."

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