She Stole My Wolf, So I Rejected the Alpha novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Eighteenth Moon
Lorna lunges for the gold light first and tears Briony's wolf out; Briony rejects the Alpha line and takes the silver light, and the outcast across the creek steps into the water.
My twin sister lunged for my wolf first, in front of the whole Silverpine Pack, on the night we turned eighteen.
I knew she would.
I had woken that morning with smoke in my lungs and the taste of wolfsbane on my tongue.
For one long minute I lay in my old bed and remembered burning.
Lorna had held the torch. I had screamed her name, and she had smiled.
Then the ceiling of our childhood room came into focus, and the smell was only pancakes.
"You're up!" Lorna said from the doorway, with two mugs of tea.
She set one in my cold hands and sat behind me to braid my hair, the way she had since we were six.
Her fingers were steady. In my other life they had shaken at the end.
"Nervous?" she asked.
"A little."
"Me too. Listen." She tied off the braid and squeezed my shoulders. "Whatever the Moon Keeper gives us tonight, we split it. Okay? Neither of us gets left behind."
It was the kindest thing she had ever said to me.
I should have known that.
I told her yes anyway, because I wanted her to be telling the truth.
That night the whole pack stood in the stone circle behind our border, two hundred wolves in the cold, with torches stuck in the frozen ground.
Alpha Garth Brackwell waited at the front in his good coat. His son Torin stood at his shoulder.
Torin was twenty-two, broad and handsome, and he smiled at me.
Beyond the stones ran Cold Creek, where our land ended.
A man stood alone on the far bank. Everyone called him the MacNeil rogue. He came to every ceremony and never crossed the water.
He had pale grey eyes, the same pale grey as Alpha Garth and Torin.
Nobody looked at him, so I didn't either.
Then the air in the circle went thin, and the Moon Keeper stepped out of nothing.
He wore a grey cloak. His face stayed half in shadow.
In one hand he held a ball of gold light. In the other, a ball of silver.
"Lorna and Briony Oakes. Two sisters, two wolves," he said. His voice carried to the back of the crowd. "Each will rise to the light she reaches for."
He lifted the gold. "The Luna's Bond. Fated to the Alpha heir. Every wolf in the pack will feel your pull. Devotion, worship, a crown."
Pack hunters were already grinning. Torin took a step forward.
I remembered that step. I remembered how good it had felt, the first year.
Then he lifted the silver. "The Silver Bond. A mate of your own. No crown, no pack. Only him."
He did not say who him was.
My wolf stirred under my ribs for the first time in my life. She was warm and huge and awake, and she knew exactly which light she wanted.
I took one step toward the silver.
Lorna moved faster.
She did not reach for the gold. She went straight for me.
Both her hands slammed into my chest and closed around something that was not there a second earlier.
My wolf.
She came up out of me in a rope of white heat, howling. Lorna hauled her into the gold light with both fists.
My ribs were being pulled out through my back.
I dropped to my knees on the frozen grass.
The gold light flared. It wrapped around Lorna, and when it faded her eyes had a ring of amber in them that had not been there before.
The whole pack gasped, and then they began to kneel.
Wave by wave, two hundred wolves went down on one knee, looking at my sister.
"Luna," someone whispered.
Torin was already smiling at her.
"Lorna," Alpha Garth said warmly. "My son's mate. Welcome home."
I could not breathe. My chest was a cold, empty room.
I pushed myself up.
"She took my wolf," I said.
Nobody turned. The Moon Keeper looked at me through his half-shadowed face, and said nothing.
Lorna's eyes met mine across the circle. She had never smiled at me like that in this life.
She had smiled like that last time, in the fire.
"Bri," she said gently, so the pack could hear. "You're upset. We'll sort it out at home."
I looked at Torin, who had let her do it. I looked at his father, who had watched it happen and called it a welcome.
"Keep her," I said. "Keep the gold, and keep my wolf until you choke on it."
Then I faced Torin. "I reject you. I reject your father and your crown, and every one of you who knelt."
Alpha Garth's face went still.
I walked to the Moon Keeper and held out my hand.
"The silver," I said.
He laid it in my palm. It was cool as creek water, and it sank into my chest where my wolf had been.
Something pulled, hard, toward the creek.
I turned.
On the far bank, the man with the grey eyes stepped into the water and began to walk toward me.
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