I Don't Need No Alpha Brothers novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Guest Right

Lainey refuses to be Keir's Luna or his bargaining chip and claims her dead parents' cabin on the fork, only to find Delaney inside it with a key.

"Use me for what?" I asked.

Keir was already walking up the bank.

"Ask me when you can feel your feet."

He didn't carry me.

I'd have bitten him if he'd tried, and I think he knew it.

He walked slow enough that I could keep up, barefoot in his jacket, and he didn't look back once.

His house sat above the Black Fork creek, a big log place with every window lit.

A tiny old woman met us at the door in a flannel nightgown and rubber boots.

She looked at me, then at him, then at my hand.

"Well, shit," she said. "Is she the one?"

"Gran."

"Don't Gran me. I felt your wolf howl from the kitchen." She grabbed my good wrist. "Come in, honey, before your toes fall off."

She put me in a bath so hot it hurt.

She bandaged my palm with tape and a clean dish towel.

She gave me a pair of Keir's sweatpants that I had to roll four times at the waist.

Then she fed me stew at a long kitchen table and watched me eat every bite.

"Brodie girl," she said. "The river one."

"Not anymore."

"Good." She took my bowl. "Never liked that man. Smiles with his mouth only."

I slept in a spare room under a quilt that smelled of cedar.

I dreamed of the gravel bar and the cold and a man's weight in my arms.

In the morning Keir was at the kitchen table with coffee and a ledger.

He pushed a mug at me without looking up.

"Sit."

"Say please."

He looked up then.

His eyes were the color of river stones in daylight.

"Please sit," he said, flat.

I sat.

"You said you'd use me," I said. "Say how."

He closed the ledger.

"Conrad has wanted the fork for fifteen years. So has my pack. Nobody's held it since your parents died."

My hands tightened on the mug.

"You know who my parents were?"

"Everybody on this river knows the story. Rogues, the cabin, the little girl who saved the big Alpha." His mouth twisted. "Conrad tells it at every border meeting."

"And now?"

"Now I have the girl, and he wants her back badly enough to send his sons into my river after her." He leaned back. "That's leverage."

"I'm not leverage."

"You're also my mate."

He said it.

"So I'm your leverage and your mate," I said. "Do I get a vote on either?"

Gran snorted from the stove.

Keir ignored her.

"You get a vote on the second. The bond doesn't make you do anything."

"Good," I said. "I vote no."

Something moved behind his face, quick, and was gone.

"Fine."

"I mean it. I just walked out of a hall full of people who thought I'd be grateful to marry whoever they put in front of me." I set the mug down. "I'm not going to be anybody's Luna because a feeling in my chest says so."

"I heard you the first time."

"And I'm not going to be your chip to trade with Conrad."

"Then what are you going to be?"

I hadn't thought about it until he asked.

I knew the answer as soon as I opened my mouth.

"I'm going home," I said. "To the fork. My father built that cabin. It's mine."

Keir was quiet for a long moment.

Gran had stopped stirring.

"Conrad will come for it," Keir said.

"Then he comes for it."

"He has two hundred wolves."

"I have a porch and a door that locks."

His mouth twitched. It was almost a smile.

"Here's my offer," he said. "You live on the fork. My pack walks its line. Anyone from Larch Ridge sets foot on it, they answer to me."

"And what do you get?"

"Conrad doesn't get the fork."

"That's it?"

"That's plenty." He stood up and took his mug to the sink. "Nobody owns you, Ketter. That's the deal. You want it or not?"

I studied his back.

He was too big for his kitchen, and he moved.

"Guest right," I said. "One moon. Then we talk again."

"One moon."

He held out his hand.

I hesitated, then shook it.

The jolt came again, softer this time, warm all the way up my arm.

Neither of us mentioned it.

I walked to the fork in borrowed boots two sizes too big.

The cabin sat where the creek met the river, gray and leaning, with the porch facing the water like it always had.

I hadn't been inside since I was seven.

Conrad had never let me come back.

He'd said it would hurt too much.

I came up the path and stopped.

The front door was open.

Beckett Brodie was sitting on my father's porch rail with his boots on the steps.

Inside the cabin, Delaney was humming.

She came to the doorway with a key ring hooked on one finger, swinging it.

"Oh," she said. "Lainey. Did nobody tell you?"

Beckett didn't get up.

"Dad gave us the fork," he said. "It's our wedding gift."

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend