Chapter 20: The Rite Again

Ronan's POV

The old Alpha of the Merrow Pack lay propped on four pillows with his hands folded on the quilt.

He was fifty-eight and looked eighty.

The lodge bedroom smelled of lavender soap and medicine, and someone had thrown the window open to the sea.

"Sit," he said. "You make the room smaller standing."

I sat in the chair by the bed.

He studied me for a long moment with eyes that were Calla's, grey-green and patient.

"I'm told my Beta has been feeding me wolfsbane."

"Yes, sir."

"I tasted it, you know." His mouth twisted. "A bitter edge, for weeks. I thought it was the new kettle."

"You drank it anyway."

"He stood there holding the cup, looking so hopeful." The old man shut his eyes. "God help me, I didn't want to disappoint him."

I said nothing.

There was nothing to say that he had not already said to himself.

"The elder tells me you stood on that beach with your hands open," he said at last, opening his eyes. "While a madman came at you with a flask."

"It was the only way to keep him off the girls."

"That isn't what the elder said. She said you were fair to my younger daughter when you had every reason not to be."

I looked down at my hands.

I had not been fair, I thought. I had been careful, which is not the same thing.

"You asked me for a Merrow daughter a month before the treaty was drawn," the old Alpha said. "I thought you were a man buying a road."

"No, sir."

"What were you buying?"

I looked at the window and the grey water.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Reborn to Get the Alpha She Rejected from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.