My Alpha Found a New Love novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Mine Tonight

Nobody answered Freya.

Nobody had to.

Four hundred wolves had just watched their Alpha go for a man's throat over me.

Every one of them was asking themselves exactly what she'd told them to.

Haakon stood up.

He didn't look at his daughter.

He bent and picked me up off the moss, naked and bleeding, and carried me up out of the ravine through the silent pack.

Behind us, I heard Freya start to cry. Real crying, this time.

He didn't stop.

Somebody threw a coat around my shoulders at the top of the cliff stairs.

Solveig, I think.

I don't remember the rest of the stairs.

I remember his rooms.

The top of the north tower, all dark wood and a wall of window over the lake, a fire banked low in the grate.

He put me down on the edge of a big chair by the fire and went for a kit.

He came back wearing a pair of jeans and nothing else.

"Hold still," he said.

He knelt in front of me and cleaned the bite.

It was bad.

I could tell from his face.

Rune had gone deep, through the old scar and past it.

Haakon threaded a curved needle without looking at it.

"This is going to hurt."

"I've been bitten in that exact spot twice now," I said. "I'll live."

He started stitching.

It hurt. I stared at the fire and didn't make a sound.

"You should have let me finish it," he said, between stitches.

"You'd have killed the groom in front of your whole pack."

"Yes."

"Two weeks before your daughter's mating. Over a guest."

I hissed as the needle went in.

"Freya would never forgive you. And every Alpha on the shore would call you unfit to lead. You know they would."

"I don't care what they'd call me."

"I care." I turned my head and looked at him. "I'm not going to be the reason you lose your pack."

His hands stopped.

"You think that's what I'm afraid of?"

"What are you afraid of, then?"

He tied the last stitch and cut the thread.

Then he sat back on his heels and looked at me.

His face was naked in a way I hadn't seen it, not even on the stairs.

"I heard you scream," he said.

"Across the ridge. I didn't know it was you until I was halfway down the rocks. And I thought, I've already put one wife in the ground."

The fire popped.

I didn't say anything. I couldn't.

He put the needle down and taped a square of gauze over the stitches with steady fingers.

"There," he said. "Go and sleep. I'll have someone sit with Espen."

He started to stand up.

I caught his wrist.

He stopped, half up, and looked at my hand on his arm.

"You said you'd be here the next night I said," I told him.

He went very still.

"Kari. You've been bitten. You're in shock."

"I'm not in shock. I'm furious."

I pulled him back down to his knees by the wrist.

"I'm furious that he can still do that to me. That he can jump on me in the dark in front of four hundred wolves and nobody moves, because he's the groom. I'm done, Haakon. I'm done waiting until I'm ready, and I'm done being careful about what your daughter says, and I'm done going to bed alone so the north thinks I'm a good little rejected Luna."

I let go of his wrist and put my hand flat on his bare chest, over his heart.

It was going hard.

"Tonight. Now. Unless you've changed your mind."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"I haven't changed my mind about anything," he said.

Then he stood, lifted me out of the chair, and carried me to his bed.

He put me down at the foot of the bed.

The wool coat fell when I shrugged it off.

I stood there naked in the firelight, and I didn't cover myself.

"Look at me," I said.

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