My Mate Bet Me Away, So the Lycan King Collected novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Terms

In the King's car Orla bargains four terms for the year and a day she owes, and learns his gate is lined with wolves filming the prize.

I did not ask where we were going.

I walked out of the hall behind the Lycan King with my bag on my shoulder and thirty thousand dollars inside it.

Nobody in Silver Creek stopped me.

Brock opened his mouth twice in the doorway and shut it both times.

A black SUV idled at the bottom of the steps, with a second one behind it.

The King held the back door open.

"Get in," he said.

"I will," I said. "Because I want to, not because you said so."

His mouth moved at one corner.

"Fine."

I climbed in.

He shut my door, walked around the hood and took the driver's seat himself.

A wiry man with a grey-streaked beard sat in front on the passenger side with a tablet on his knee.

"Tobias Greer," he said without turning around. "His beta. I do the paperwork when he wins things."

"Do you do that often?"

"No. He doesn't win people. He wins money."

"Tobias," Lucan said.

"Sorry. Prize." Tobias tapped the tablet. "Ms. Ardmore, welcome to the worst day of your life."

"It's already been the worst day of my life," I said. "It started on a plane."

Tobias laughed, once, through his nose.

The King pulled out of the lot and took the mountain road west.

I held my bag on my lap.

I waited for him to say something that made it easier, and he did not.

So I said it myself.

"I want to know exactly what I am to you."

His grey eyes found me in the mirror.

"Under Moon law, a signed IOU at a Blood Moon table is binding on the signer's holdings," he said. "A mate counts as a holding when the mark is his."

"I'm not a holding."

"The law disagrees."

"The law was written by men with beer in their hands."

"The law was written eight hundred years ago by a Luna," Tobias said. "She had a longer list of grievances than you do."

I looked out the window and counted pine trees until I could speak without shaking.

"How long?" I said.

"A year and a day, from last night."

"And if I refuse?"

"Then I take it to the Moon Court, and the Court gives you back to Brock with a fine."

I turned from the window.

"That's not a choice."

"It's the only one the law gives you." He kept his eyes on the road. "I'm not asking you to like it."

"Then why did you sit down at that table?"

His hands tightened on the wheel.

"I play at the Blood Moon every year," he said. "Nobody ever put a woman on the table before."

It was a plain answer.

It was also the first thing he'd said that did not sound entirely true.

I noticed it and set it aside.

"What's the way out?" I said.

Tobias glanced at his King.

"There's one," he said. "A prize can win herself back at the next Blood Moon table. One hand, against the man who holds her."

"Against you."

"Against me," Lucan said.

"Do you ever lose?"

"No."

"Then I'll be the first."

"I'd like to see that," he said, and I could not tell whether he meant it kindly.

I took a pen from my bag and wrote on the back of a receipt.

"If I'm your prize for a year and a day," I said, "I have terms."

Tobias turned in his seat and sat up straighter.

"First," I said. "I keep my own room, with my own door, and it locks from the inside."

"Done," Lucan said.

"Second. You don't touch me unless I say so."

The car went quiet.

He did not look at the mirror this time.

"Done," he said, and his voice had dropped.

"Third. I sit across from you at the Blood Moon table and you teach me the hand."

Tobias made a small noise.

"You want him to teach you how to beat him," he said.

"Yes."

"Done," Lucan said. "Fourth?"

"I see my grandmother every Sunday. Hazel Ardmore. She's seventy-one and she lives at the bottom of Silver Creek's land, and I flew home for her."

"Done."

"You agreed to all of them without arguing."

"Every one was reasonable." His eyes met mine in the mirror again. "I thought you'd ask for more."

"I'm still thinking."

"Think faster," Tobias said. "We're almost at the gate."

I put the receipt in my pocket.

My skin had been prickling since I got into the car, along my arms and the back of my neck.

It was worst when he looked at me.

I told myself it was nerves, and the altitude, and a long flight.

I touched my left shoulder, and my mark lay cold under my sleeve.

The road bent around a ridge, and the trees opened onto a stone wall twice the height of the SUV.

An iron gate stood in the middle of it with its doors already swinging wide.

There were wolves on both sides of the drive.

Hundreds of them, in human skin, packed shoulder to shoulder.

Every single one of them had a phone raised.

"Your Court," Tobias said. "They've been waiting since sunrise to see what Silver Creek sold you."

"They know what I look like?"

"They've all seen the photo."

I looked at the phones.

I looked at the lenses, all pointed at the window where my face sat.

Lucan put the SUV in park at the gate and turned around in his seat to look at me.

"Say the word," he said. "I'll drive through the back."

I put my hand on the door handle.

"No," I said. "Open it."

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