The Alpha Who Rejected His Queen novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Out by Morning

Verity says goodbye with a smile, Fenn slips Ilse a bag, and two border guards attack her on the bridge. Her wolf speaks for the first time and she throws them, and a stranger at the road says her mother's name.

I had one hour to pack, and everything I owned fit in a canvas bag.

Two shirts, a pair of boots, and a hairbrush the old healer gave me when I was twelve.

I stood in my room at the back of the pack house and listened to the music coming through the walls.

They were celebrating.

The Alpha had a Luna, and the pack wanted to dance.

Someone knocked once and came in without waiting.

Verity Marrow shut the door behind her and leaned on it, still in her green dress.

"You're really leaving," she said.

"You heard him."

"I did." She walked to my bed and sat down without being asked.

"I want you to know I never meant it to hurt you, Ilse."

I kept packing.

"You told him everything I said to you," I said.

"I told him what he needed to know." She said it gently. "You'd have told him yourself eventually."

"I told you about my wolf. I told you I cried when I turned eighteen and nothing came."

"And it made him sad for you."

"It made him decide I was weak."

Verity smiled at me.

It was the same warm smile she used at every meal.

"You are weak, honey. That isn't a secret. We were all kind enough not to say it."

I stopped with my hairbrush in my hand.

For six years I had thought she was kind.

"Get out of my room," I said.

"I'll look after him," she said, standing up. "You can stop worrying about that, at least."

She kissed my cheek before I could turn away.

Then she went back to the party.

I zipped the bag and sat on the bed for a minute with my hands shaking.

Another knock came, softer.

Fenn Aldous came in sideways, with his sandy hair sticking up and grease still under his nails.

He was the pack mechanic, and he was the only person in the house who had ever fixed my bike without being asked.

"I heard," he whispered. "Every wolf in the hall heard. I'm so sorry, Ilse."

He held out a small bundle wrapped in a dish towel.

"Bread, cheese, the good jerky. And three hundred dollars. Don't argue."

"Fenn, I can't."

"You can, and you will." He pushed it into my bag himself.

"Where will you go?"

"I don't know. Away from here."

He hugged me hard.

"Whatever Joran says," he said into my hair, "you were never weak. You stayed up three nights with me when my mom died. Tell me who else did that."

I laughed, and it came out wet.

"Go," he said. "Out the back, along the creek. The south road, past the old mill. Nobody's watching it tonight."

He was wrong about that.

I found out when I reached the creek bridge at the pack's southern border, where the road leaves our territory.

Two guards stood in the middle of it with flashlights.

I knew them both by sight.

They were Joran's men, and they had both been laughing in the back row of the hall.

"Rejected wolves don't walk out," the taller one said. "They get checked."

"I'm leaving. I'm doing what he said."

"We're doing what he said too." The shorter one grinned. "Alpha wants the token back."

"I gave it to him on the dais."

"He wants the other one."

I did not have another token.

I realized they didn't care.

The taller guard grabbed my bag and ripped it off my shoulder.

My bread and my cheese and the three hundred dollars hit the gravel.

"Don't touch that," I said.

He shoved me in the chest.

I hit the rail of the bridge and my head snapped back against the iron.

White light burst behind my eyes.

"Weak little orphan," he said, laughing. "Alpha said she'd cry. Cry, then."

Something inside my chest turned over.

It was slow, and it felt like a door opening inside me.

Then a voice spoke inside my head, low and clear, in a tone I'd never heard.

*Enough.*

My wolf.

Twenty-four years of silence, and her first word to me was a command.

Heat ran down my arms and into my fingers.

I could feel the guard's pulse through his sleeve, fast and stupid.

I could feel the bridge rail humming under my back.

Every part of me woke up at once.

I didn't think.

I put my hand flat on his chest and pushed.

He flew backward off his feet, hit the road ten feet away, and slid.

The shorter guard stopped grinning.

He reached for me.

I caught his wrist, twisted, and threw him over the rail into the creek.

The splash echoed down the gorge.

The tall one was trying to stand, gasping and staring at me.

"What did you do?" he said. "You can't do that. You're nothing."

I picked up my bread and my cheese and the three hundred dollars.

I slung my bag over my shoulder.

My hands had stopped shaking.

"Tell your Alpha I kept the road," I said.

I walked across the bridge and out of Iron Moon land.

The moon was high and bright, and for the first time in my life I wasn't tired.

At the end of the road, a man stood leaning on a pickup truck with his arms crossed.

He had a red-brown beard, a leather coat, and green eyes that had been waiting a long time.

He did not look surprised at all.

"Ilse Penhallow," he said. "You have your mother's walk."

I stopped walking.

"I never knew my mother."

"I know," said the man. "Her name was Aurelle, and I've been waiting at this bridge for six years to tell you."

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