My Mate Didn't Want Me, So I Refused Him Louder novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The East Wing

Moved into the lodge under the pack's stares, Linnea finds herself at the Alpha's door in the night.

The whole pack was waiting in the great hall.

Nobody said a word when I came in with my duffel bag, and nobody needed to.

They had all seen the video.

A young wolf by the fire nudged his friend, and a woman at the long table turned her face away.

"Chins up," Ingrid said at my ear. She had met me at the door in her work blazer with a clipboard under one arm. "I've told the kitchen to feed you first. And I've told everyone else what I'll do to them if they stare."

"It's not working."

"Give it ten minutes."

A white-haired man in a cardigan stepped out of the crowd and took both my hands in his.

"Miss Aaberg. I'm Gunnar, the Alpha's uncle, and I sit on the Council." His voice was soft and sorry. "I wanted to say how sorry I am about the other night. My nephew has no manners and never has."

"Thank you," I said, and meant it a little.

"If you need anything, you go to Ingrid, or you come to me."

"He's an old sweetheart," Ingrid said as he drifted away. "He raised those boys after their mother left."

The east wing was a long hall of guest rooms with a wall of windows facing the lake.

Mine had a bed with a quilt, a desk and a bathroom with an actual bathtub.

Ingrid dumped my bag on the bed and started unpacking it herself.

"You still sleep in men's flannel," she said, holding up a shirt.

"They're warm."

"They're hideous." She hung it in the closet anyway. "How's the wolf?"

"Loud."

"What's she like?"

I thought about it. "Angry. And a little bit stupid about him."

Ingrid laughed, and then she stopped laughing and sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Lin," she said, "I'd have given anything for it to go differently. I need you to know that."

"I know."

"Whatever he did, I'm on your side."

She hugged me hard, and the silver cuff pressed into my back.

Anders knocked on the open door a minute later with a plate of sandwiches in each hand.

"Emergency rations," he said. "Don't tell my brother I came in the wing."

"He agreed not to set foot in it. You didn't."

"Loophole." He dropped onto the desk chair and bit into a sandwich. "For the record, I want to say he's an idiot."

"For the record, I agree."

"He's usually a better idiot than this. He's been strange since the Gathering. And before it."

"Before?"

Anders chewed. "Forget I said it. Eat."

Ingrid gave him a look, and he ate.

That night I lay awake under the quilt and listened to the lodge settling.

The wolf in me paced.

She paced from the foot of my bed to the window and back, and I told her no, and she paced harder.

Somewhere past two I must have slept.

I woke on four legs, in a dark corridor I didn't recognize.

The floor was cold under my paws.

I could smell pine smoke and cold iron, so thick I could taste it, and my wolf was pressed against a heavy oak door with her nose in the crack at the bottom.

The west wing, I thought. Torin's door.

I tried to back away, and the wolf wouldn't let me.

On the other side of the wood something moved. A floorboard creaked, and then it creaked again.

He was pacing, too.

The pacing stopped.

I heard him breathing right on the other side of the door, short and ragged, and I knew he was standing with his forehead against it.

I shifted back before I could think. It was easier this time.

I knelt there in the dark in the oversized flannel shirt I'd gone to bed in, with my hands flat on the floor.

"You promised the east wing," I whispered.

"You left it." His voice was low and rough.

"My wolf did."

"I know." A long pause. "I can smell her from here."

My throat closed.

"Go back to bed, Aaberg."

"Tell me to my face."

"Linnea." He had never used my first name on its own before. "Please. If you have to wander, go out the east door. Not this one."

I stayed on my knees for another minute with my heart hammering against the floor.

Anders told me the next morning that Torin Hauge had never said please to anyone in his life.

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