My Alpha Found a New Love novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: The Braid
I looked at her for a long time.
At the scar on her neck that matched mine.
"You'll pin it," I said. "And your hands had better be steady."
The September full moon came up over Lake Superior orange as a coal.
The great hall was packed again.
Kingsfall filled the floor and the stairs and the terrace doors.
Greyfir stood along the west wall, where they'd stood all summer, except now nobody looked lost.
Espen stood at the front of them in a borrowed jacket that was too short in the arms, trying to look dignified.
He'd brought a cake.
It said ESPEN on it in blue icing, and nothing else.
Solveig had already eaten one corner.
The eleven Alphas had come back up the shore.
All of them.
The heavy one from the south shore, who'd called me sweetheart at the challenge, sat at the very end of the step and wouldn't meet my eyes.
I sat on a low stool at the edge of the stone circle, in a dark green dress, with my hair down my back.
The glass roof was still black.
The moon hadn't reached it yet.
Freya came out of the crowd.
She was wearing the plain gray wool the new recruits wore, and her hair was in a tight working braid, and her hands were red from three weeks of barracks chores.
The hall went quiet as she passed.
Not respectful.
Watchful.
She didn't look at any of them.
She knelt behind my stool on the stone.
I felt her pick up my hair.
Her fingers shook for a second, and then they didn't.
She braided it the old way, three strands and then three more, tight against my head and long down my back.
She'd been taught it by her mother.
I could tell.
Then she held out her hand, and Solveig laid the moonstone pin in it.
Freya wound the end of my braid up onto the crown of my head.
She slid the pin through it and pushed it home.
"There," she said, very low, so only I could hear. "Now everyone knows where it came from."
My own words.
From the night she knelt in front of me in white.
I turned my head and looked at her.
She held my eyes for one second.
Then she stood up and stepped back into the crowd, and didn't come forward again.
The moon reached the glass.
White light poured straight down onto the stone circle and onto me.
The old elder came forward with his staff and a thin silver circlet in his other hand.
The Luna's circlet of Kingsfall.
It had sat in a velvet box for twelve years.
He set it on my head, over the braid, over the moonstone.
It was lighter than I expected.
"Luna of Kingsfall," he said.
Haakon stepped down to me.
He was steady on his feet again.
The fever had left him leaner, and the gray at his temples had spread a little, and he'd told me that was my fault, and he was probably right.
He held out his hand.
I took it and stood.
He didn't let go.
He turned us both to face the hall, and then, in front of four hundred and seventy wolves and eleven Alphas, he put his other hand flat on my stomach.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of My Alpha Found a New Love are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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