Not the Bride He Wanted novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Four Hands on the Stone

At the double wedding the King's hand brushes Kirsten's on the oath stone and he goes rigid; at the feast Brenna renounces her father in front of the packs, then watches Kirsten slip into her husband's study.

The oath stone sat on the edge of the bluff.

Seven packs stood in a half circle around it in their good coats.

The wind came off Lake Superior hard enough to snap the hem of my gown.

My father walked Kirsten up the path first.

She'd found another white dress somewhere, short and lacy, and she held a bunch of yellow birch leaves like a bouquet.

Aksel walked beside her with his eyes on the ground.

Nobody walked me.

I came up the path alone, and I heard the packs go quiet as I passed.

Magnus was waiting at the stone.

He watched me the whole way up, and he didn't look anywhere else.

The Council's eldest stood behind the stone, an old woman with white hair to her waist and a voice like a crow.

"Two couples," she said. "One stone. Hands down."

That was the old way.

Both couples laid their hands flat on the basalt, side by side, so the packs could see whose hand touched whose.

I put my right hand on the stone.

Magnus laid his left over it, warm and heavy.

His right hand lay flat on the stone beside ours.

Kirsten and Aksel stood across the corner from us.

Kirsten put her hand down, and her little finger landed against the side of Magnus's right hand.

Magnus went still.

I felt it through his palm before I saw it.

Every muscle in his hand locked hard over mine.

I looked up.

His eyes had gone gold.

Not for long.

One breath, maybe two, bright gold, and then pale blue again.

Across the stone, Kirsten made a small sound in her throat.

She was staring at him with her lips parted.

Aksel looked from her to the King and back, frowning.

The eldest poured a cup of lake water over all four hands.

It was so cold it burned.

Magnus moved his right hand away from my sister's as soon as the water hit.

He didn't look at her again.

"Speak," the eldest said to me.

I'd been told there were words.

I didn't use them.

"I came here on my own feet," I said to Magnus. "Nobody gave me to you."

He waited.

"I'll stand where you stand, and I won't lie to you. I expect the same."

The packs murmured.

Magnus's thumb pressed once into the back of my hand.

"You'll have it," he said. "And you'll have my name, and my roof, and every wolf in this half circle answering to you."

His voice was rough.

The eldest bound our wrists with a strip of gray wool.

Then she turned to Kirsten and Aksel, and they said the old words fast, like children reciting.

My father clapped too loudly when it was done.

The feast was in the great hall at the Hall.

Long tables, smoked whitefish, venison, too much beer.

They put my father at the King's table because the treaty said they had to.

Halfway through the venison, Harald Nyberg stood up and tapped his glass with a knife.

"To my girls," he said.

He raised the glass toward Kirsten and Aksel at the end of the table.

"To my Kirsten, who followed her heart."

Then he turned the glass toward me.

"And to Brenna. Every good pack keeps a spare. Glad ours finally came in useful."

Some people laughed.

Most didn't.

Kirsten hid a smile behind her napkin.

I put my fork down.

Every Copper Ridge wolf wore a braided copper cord around the left wrist.

My mother had tied mine on when I was a baby, and my father had retied it every year since.

I pulled the steak knife from beside my plate and stood up.

The room went quiet.

I slid the blade under the copper cord and cut it.

It dropped onto the white tablecloth in front of my father's plate.

"I'm not your spare," I said. "I'm not your daughter in this hall. And from tonight, you're not my Alpha."

My father's face went the color of the wine.

"You sit down."

"She doesn't take orders from you," Magnus said.

He didn't stand.

He didn't raise his voice.

He just looked at my father until my father sat down.

Under the table, Tilde kicked my ankle and whispered, "Marry me instead."

I almost laughed.

Magnus took my hand on the tablecloth and held it there, in front of all of them.

I looked down the table to see Kirsten's face.

Her chair was empty.

Late in the evening, Magnus excused himself from the table and didn't come back.

When the dancing started, I stepped into the passage to breathe.

At the far end, past the stair, a door stood half open with firelight behind it.

It was his study.

Kirsten slipped through it in her short white dress, glanced once back along the passage, and pulled the door shut behind her.

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