He Rejected Me the Night I Birthed His Twins novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Pups Don't Leave

Rhoda's wolves block the border bridge with the twins, and Morven dares them to take the babies from her arms. Torin Hawksworth walks onto the bridge.

I did not stay to hear the elders say it was done.

The housekeeper pressed her car keys into my hand, then took them back, because I could not close my fingers.

"I'll drive," she said. "Hold them. Don't you dare let go."

She got me down the service stairs one step at a time.

Every step tore at me.

Blood ran down my legs into my slippers, and I did not care.

My daughter and my son were warm against my chest, and that was the only thing I could feel.

Behind the kitchen wall, the band started a new song.

Nobody inside that house had asked where I was going.

The rain was coming sideways when she opened the car door.

"Where?" she asked.

"Away from here," I said. "Anywhere that isn't Black Fir."

"There's one road out that doesn't pass the main gate," she said. "The old Skagit bridge. Across it is Ironwood land."

"Ironwood doesn't like us."

"Honey, tonight I don't care who likes who."

She pulled out with the headlights off until we cleared the ridge.

My son made a thin sound in his sleep.

My daughter tucked her fist under her chin.

Neither of them had a name yet.

I had meant to ask Cedric about names.

I stopped thinking about that and watched the rain.

The bridge came up out of the dark, white railings and a barrier arm, and at the middle of it stood six wolves in human form with the Black Fir crest on their coats.

The housekeeper stopped the car.

A man in front lifted his hand.

I knew his face. He was the border captain, and he had once eaten my lemon cake at the pack picnic and asked me for the recipe.

He did not look at me now.

"Luna," he said, and then he coughed. "Miss Moncrief. Orders from the Alpha's mother. The pups stay on pack land."

"The Alpha rejected me less than an hour ago," I said. "I accepted. You can check the link. I'm not your Luna."

"You're not," he said. "But those are pack-born pups, and Black Fir keeps what it bore. Rhoda Grimshaw says you can go. They stay."

"They are not even two hours old," I said.

"They'll be fed. They'll be looked after."

"By who?"

He had no answer.

The rain ran off his coat onto the road.

The housekeeper got out of the car and stood in front of him with her hands on her hips.

"You're going to take two newborns away from their mother in the rain," she said. "You know what that makes you."

"I know what the Alpha's mother will do to me if I don't," he said, very quietly.

I opened my door.

My legs would barely hold.

I took one step, and two, and then the border captain and his men were all looking at me.

"Take them, then," I said.

I held both babies out in front of me.

"Come on. Which of you is going to do it? I'm bleeding on this road and I can barely stand, so you will never have an easier time."

Nobody moved.

"You, Captain. You ate my cake. You had a daughter in the spring, I sent the blanket."

"Miss Moncrief."

"Come take my son out of my arm in front of all five of them. I want them to see your face when you do it."

He stepped back.

Then, from behind him, a second voice said, "Hold on."

It was Rhoda's Beta.

He had walked out of the dark on the Black Fir side with two more wolves.

"The Alpha's mother has no time for this," he said. "Take the boy. Leave the girl to the mother if you must."

"I won't," I said. "Both, or neither."

The Beta shrugged and reached.

His hand never got to me.

Someone had stepped onto the bridge from the far side.

He came out of the rain without hurry, a tall man in a canvas jacket with no wolves behind him.

He stopped at the far end of the barrier, where Black Fir's land stopped and the river began.

"That's the Ironwood line," he said. "You are about to put a hand across it."

The Beta looked over his shoulder.

"Alpha Hawksworth," he said. "This is not Ironwood business."

"There's a woman with two babies on my bridge."

"On Black Fir's half of it."

"Then she should have stepped five feet to the left, shouldn't she?"

I did not understand what he meant until I looked down.

The line of the border was painted in yellow across the road.

I stood a hand's width from it.

He had said it so that I would hear it.

I took one step, and I was on his side.

The man in the canvas jacket did not touch me.

He did not even look at the babies. He looked at the Beta.

"Pack-born pups belong to whichever pack their mother belongs to," he said. "That is the rule on this river and has been for two hundred years. Your Alpha rejected her in front of three elders, so she belongs to no one. Tonight she can choose."

"Torin Hawksworth," said the Beta, "you are starting something."

"I'm walking a woman off a bridge."

"Do you know what she is? She has no wolf. She is nothing."

The man called Torin turned his head.

For the first time he looked at me.

A truck was coming down the Ironwood road, and its headlights rolled across my face.

He went completely still.

"What?" I said. "What is it?"

"Miss Moncrief," he said. "Look at your reflection in the car window."

I turned my head.

In the glass, in the middle of my own white face, my eyes were gold.

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