Father Sold Me to an Alpha, So I Signed My Sister's Name novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Rogue

Her father names Linnea rogue in front of both packs and burns her pack token; she forces him to promise Nan's safety, refuses the Blackmere Alpha's hand, and the gate chains shut as the enforcers shift behind her.

My father said it in the old words, so nobody could claim they had misheard.

"Linnea Hartwell, by the voice of the Alpha of Greywater, you are cast out. You have no pack, no name in this house, and no claim on its roof."

The hall had been silent before.

Now it was a held weight, and I stood under it.

A rogue has no pack to answer for her.

The oldest law in the valley says a rogue who is still on Greywater land one hour after being named belongs to whoever finds her.

My father looked at the clock above the fireplace so everyone could see him doing it.

"One hour," he said. "Starting now."

The steward carried my pack token across the floor on a silver dish.

It was a small grey wolf's tooth on a leather cord, and I had worn it since I was born.

My father took it between two fingers and dropped it in the hearth.

The fire spat once.

The leather curled and went black.

I watched it burn, and I did not cry.

I had decided on the stairs that I would not give him that.

"There's one more thing," I said.

"You have nothing left to say."

"Nan Whitaker keeps her cottage. You announce it now, in front of Blackmere, or I stand here the whole hour and tell them why you want her gone."

My father's jaw worked.

I had never in my life threatened him in front of other people.

A few heads in the Greywater line turned toward the old women's row, where Nan sat in her green shawl with her hands folded and her eyes on me.

"The midwife stays in her house," my father said, through his teeth. "Satisfied?"

"Say it so Blackmere hears it."

"The midwife stays. No one touches her."

Conrad had not moved from the spot where he had refused my sister.

"Blackmere hears it," he said, to the room, and forty of his wolves nodded once.

My father's hands curled into fists.

I took the small bag from beside the stairs where I had left it that morning, the one I had packed on the nights I thought about running.

It held a change of clothes, a phone charger and sixty dollars.

I walked down the last stairs and across the hall toward the doors.

Nobody stopped me.

Nobody said my name.

My stepmother looked at the floor.

Daphne came after me with her white skirt gathered in her fists.

"Lin, wait. Wait, you can't go out in this. It's freezing."

She pulled her own wool coat off a hook, a long camel one, and held it out.

Every person in the hall watched her do it.

"Take it," she said. "Please. Dad will cool down by tonight. Come back and we'll talk, I promise. I'll fix it."

She was crying again, and her fingers were warm again.

A week earlier I would have taken the coat.

I looked at the silver crescent that lay on her white collar, my mother's, with a bent link I had mended myself at fourteen.

"Keep it," I said. "You keep everything else."

I saw it land.

For one second her face was not a sister's face at all.

Then she wiped her cheek and let her arm fall, and she looked like a girl whose sister had been cruel.

I pushed through the front doors into the cold.

I made it to the bottom of the steps before I heard boots behind me.

I knew they were his boots.

"Linnea."

Conrad Mallory had come down the steps after me.

He kept six feet between us and held his hand out, palm up.

"My car is at the gate," he said. "Come with me."

"No."

"You have an hour on this land and nowhere to go."

"I'll find somewhere."

"Every road out of this valley goes through your father's wolves. Let me drive you out."

I looked at his hand.

It was a big hand, scarred across the knuckles, and perfectly steady.

There was nothing in that hand but the offer, and that frightened me more than a fist would have.

"I'm not your Luna," I said. "I'm not anybody's."

"I know."

"Then why are you standing there?"

"Because you're walking out of a house where you were just named prey," he said. "And I would like it if you lived."

I did not take his hand.

I walked past him down the long drive with my bag on my shoulder and the grey afternoon in my face.

He did not follow.

He stood at the foot of the steps and watched me go, and I felt his eyes on my back the whole way to the gate.

The gate was open.

I reached it, and I stepped through, and I did not look back.

Behind me, the iron began to swing shut.

I turned.

The chain went through the bars with a rattle, and a lock clicked home.

On the lawn behind it, a dozen of my father's enforcers had gone down on all fours, and their bones were already cracking.

My father had promised an hour, and he had not waited ten minutes.

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