My Alpha Parents Gave My Tuition Away, So the Royal Command Took Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Keep

She wins the sparring ring and learns the Commander's rule, then hears her father has petitioned the Court.

I got into the car as a wolf, and it took Teague two tries and a blanket.

"Mind the seat," he said. "It's leather. Not that I'm worried. Take your time."

Hollis Garrow sat in the front with his back to me and did not turn around once.

Behind us my father's warriors stood in the yard and watched us go.

My mother was still holding the cup.

Twenty minutes down the highway, Hollis said, "Think about your hands."

"I can't talk," I thought, and of course nothing came out.

"I know. Think about your hands. Something you do with them every day."

I thought about a socket wrench seating on a bolt.

The change took me by the spine and put me back in the seat as a woman, in a stranger's blanket.

Teague passed a folded black coat back over his shoulder without looking.

"Put that on," Hollis said, to the windshield. "We'll find you clothes at the Keep."

I put it on.

It smelled like pine and gun oil and something warm underneath that made my skin prickle.

I told myself it was the shift.

The Royal Command's Keep was a grey stone compound at the edge of the capital, next to the Royal Warriors' College.

I could see the College's silver gate from the car window, and my stomach turned over.

Sabine was somewhere behind that gate, on my money.

They gave me a bunk, a uniform that fit nearly right, and a bowl of eggs that Teague called breakfast.

At noon Hollis walked me out to an open ring of packed sand.

Forty recruits stood around its edge with their arms folded.

"Every new recruit spars on day one," Hollis said. "It sets your rank in the barracks."

"Fine," I said.

"Your opponent is a B-Rank. Three years in."

A broad woman in a grey vest stepped into the ring and rolled her neck.

"The mechanic," someone said, and there was a laugh.

I stepped into the ring and the sand was warm under my boots.

She came in fast with a straight right.

I knew it was coming before it started, because I had spent twenty-two years learning when a heavy thing was about to move.

I stepped inside it.

I caught her wrist and turned her own weight against her.

She hit the sand flat on her back.

The laughing stopped.

She came up with a growl and her wolf in her eyes.

Mine came up to meet it, a white flash behind my ribs, and she stopped halfway to her feet.

She looked at me and then she looked at the ground.

"Yield," she said.

Teague whistled.

Forty recruits looked at me with a different kind of face than before.

Hollis hadn't moved.

His eyes were on my hands.

That evening I found him at the door of my bunk room with his arms crossed.

"Rules," he said.

"I thought you'd have a list."

"One matters." His eyes went to the wall behind my head. "A handler does not touch his recruit. Not for training, not for comfort, not once. I don't break it, and neither will you."

I felt my face go hot.

"I didn't ask you to."

"Good."

"I didn't ask anything," I said. "I just got hit by a hundred things in one day and I'd like a second to breathe."

For one second his jaw worked, and I could see him decide not to say something.

"Then breathe," he said. "Goodnight, Brask."

He turned and left, and I watched his shoulders go down the corridor.

His hand was closed around his left wrist.

I sat down on the bunk with his coat still around me.

I hadn't given it back.

I thought about giving it back.

I put my nose in the collar instead, and hated myself a little.

At the door, Teague rapped twice and leaned in with two mugs.

"Cocoa," he said. "Don't tell him I was nice."

"What was that about, the wrist?"

"No idea." He said it too quickly. "Drink your cocoa. You're going to want your strength, because the Marshal's looking for you."

"Already?"

"Your father's lawyer filed with the Royal Court this afternoon."

The mug stopped halfway to my mouth.

"He wants the contract voided," Teague said. "He says you're a minor under pack law and a mistake in the Crown's instruments."

"Can he do that?"

"He can ask. The hearing's in twelve days."

I put the mug down.

I wasn't scared, I realized.

I was angry, and it felt better than any other feeling I'd had in the past twenty-four hours.

"Good," I said. "Twelve days is plenty."

"For what?"

"To find out what my father's been hiding for four years of stipend," I said. "And to find out why he's so sure about my sister."

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