He Chose Her, So I Refused to Become His Luna novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Nursery

Dara leaves the hospital against orders, finds Celia in the nursery she built, and feels the first pain of the bond; Tobias waits at the gate with a room across the creek.

"No," I said.

Dirk's hands closed into fists at his sides.

"You will stay in this room until you take it back," he said. "I'm still your Alpha."

"You're my Alpha. You're not my doctor."

Maisy Mullins had been standing in the doorway since I tore the paper.

She is my best friend and she works the next ward over.

She pushed a wheelchair in ahead of her and parked it against the bed.

"Patient's own discharge," Maisy said. "Against medical advice. She's a nurse, so she knows exactly what she's signing."

"This is an Alpha order," Dirk said.

"It's a clinic form, Alpha," Maisy said. "I'll take it up with the Council if you want. Loudly. In the hall."

Dirk looked at the three heirs.

They were all watching him now.

He stepped back from the bed.

I signed my name with the pen from Maisy's pocket.

My hand did not shake until I put the cap back on.

Celia stood very still by the window.

A tear ran down her cheek and she let it.

"Dara, please," she said. "Where will you go?"

"Home," I said. "To get my things."

Maisy drove me up the ridge road in her old Subaru with the heater on high.

I was cold in a way that had nothing to do with the weather.

The Alpha house sat at the top of the ridge with every window lit.

Two guards at the door looked at each other and let us in without a word.

The housekeeper met us in the front hall.

She had been crying and had tried to hide it.

"Miss Dara," she said. "I'm so sorry. I didn't want to."

"Didn't want to what?"

She looked up the stairs.

I climbed them one at a time with my hand on the rail.

Maisy came behind me and did not say anything.

The nursery door stood open on the third floor.

The walls were yellow. I had painted the second coat myself, on a stepladder, while Dirk held the bottom rung.

The crib lay in pieces against the wall, and the rocking chair was gone.

Celia knelt on the floor in the middle of the room with a cardboard box.

She was folding a tiny white blanket into thirds.

She set it in the box with the others.

"Oh," she said, when she saw me. She stood up with her hand over her mouth.

"Oh, Dara. I thought you were still at the clinic."

"What are you doing in here?"

"Dirk asked me to," Celia said, and her voice shook. "Yesterday. He said you shouldn't have to see it."

"Yesterday," I said.

Yesterday I had been in a hospital bed, asleep on a sedative.

"I didn't want a stranger to do it," Celia said. "I wanted it to be someone who loved you."

The housekeeper stood in the doorway behind me.

Two maids stood behind her, and a guard behind them, and all of them were looking at the floor.

Every person in that house had known about the nursery since yesterday.

I was the last one to find out.

I walked past Celia and opened the closet.

My mother's quilt was folded on the top shelf, the blue one with the stitched stars.

She made it before she died, when I was six.

I took it down and held it against my chest.

"That's all I'm taking," I said. "The rest is his."

"You don't have to go tonight," Celia said. "Please. Dirk will be sick if you go."

"He wasn't sick when he brought the paper."

The first pain hit me then, low and sharp, right under the mark on my collarbone.

It pulled at my chest and would not let go.

My knees went.

Maisy caught my elbow before I reached the floor.

Dirk's footsteps came up the stairs fast, two at a time.

He stopped in the doorway and saw the quilt in my arms.

"You're not leaving," he said.

"Seven nights," I said, when I could breathe. "That's how long it takes to cut a bond. You know it as well as I do."

"Celia is staying here until you come to your senses," Dirk said. "Someone has to run this house."

"Someone does," I said. "It isn't going to be me."

I walked past him and down the stairs.

Every step pulled at my collarbone.

The guards at the front door did not stop me.

Maisy held the car door open.

Outside it had started to rain.

A truck I knew sat at the bottom of the drive with its engine off.

The man leaning against it was soaked to the skin, and he had been there a long time.

Tobias Hargrove straightened when he saw me.

"Cold Creek has a room," he said. "Your grandmother already said yes."

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