My Fated Alpha Used Me as Revenge Obeyed 100 Rules and Still Got Rejected in Front of His Pack? novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Garden Gate

At the dawn run a guard grabs Autumn's braid and Jasper's wolf takes him down before Jasper thinks; she finds the Luna's garden gate mended in the night with his knife in the post.

Rule seventeen said I ran with the pack at dawn, and I had not run with the pack since I was sixteen.

Omegas run last.

We shift in the trees at the edge of the meadow and trail the warriors up the valley.

Nobody looks back to see who has fallen behind.

That morning I shifted behind a juniper bush with my braid wrapped around my fist.

My wolf is small and grey-brown and shy, and she came out slowly.

Jasper ran at the front as a big black wolf, and he did not look back either.

Rule two said one step behind him in public.

I kept up for six miles, mostly out of spite.

At the creek the pack stopped to drink.

One by one we shifted back and pulled on the clothes we'd left in bundles on the rocks.

I was wringing out my braid when a hand grabbed the end of it and yanked.

My head snapped back.

"So this is what he picked," a warrior said behind me.

He was one of Alpha Roland's men, broad and sour-faced, and he smelled of last night's whiskey.

"Not even a rank. Let's see if you bleed like a Luna."

He pulled again, and I put my elbow back into his ribs.

It did nothing.

I never saw Jasper cross the creek.

One moment the warrior's fist was in my hair.

The next he was flat on his back against a boulder, with Jasper's forearm across his throat.

Jasper had not finished shifting back.

His eyes were gold, and his teeth were longer than they should have been.

"Touch her again," Jasper said, and his voice was more growl than words, "and I will take the hand."

The warrior's face went grey.

"Alpha-to-be, I only-"

"Say you're sorry to her."

"I'm sorry," the warrior gasped.

Jasper held him there for another breath.

Then he let go, and the man slid down the rock and scrambled away.

Nobody at the creek said anything.

Thirty wolves stood on the bank in their half-buttoned clothes, watching.

Jasper looked around and saw them all watching.

He stood up straight, and the gold went out of his eyes.

"She's under my rules," he said, flat and loud. "Nobody breaks her but me. That's territory, nothing else."

He walked into the water up to his knees and splashed his face.

Both his hands were shaking.

Cordelia Sunderland appeared at my elbow with a towel.

"You're bleeding," she said, and turned my head to look at my scalp. "Here. I carry spares."

She pulled a hair tie out of one coat pocket and a clean cloth from the other.

She dabbed at the sore place while I held still.

"He doesn't usually do that," she said, watching Jasper in the water.

"He said it was territory."

"Hm," said Cordelia, and tied my braid up gently.

Lottie jogged past us on the bank, red-faced from the yard.

"Told you not to get your braid eaten," she called, and I laughed in spite of myself.

I told myself the same thing all the way back to the house.

He had pinned a man for pulling my hair, and he had stayed gold-eyed for a full minute after the man ran.

His hands had shaken, and he had looked at me, once, across the whole creek.

But Jasper Radcliffe was the Alpha-to-be, and I was under his rules.

Of course he wouldn't let another wolf break his property.

That was what I decided, and I held onto it.

In the afternoon I went down to the garden.

It was the one place at the house that was mine.

The pack's last Luna, Jasper's mother, had planted it before he was born.

For three years I had been the only one who tended it.

The back gate had hung off one hinge since the spring.

I had propped it shut with a rock every night and kicked the rock away every morning.

This afternoon I came down the path and stopped.

The gate hung straight and square on both hinges.

New nails, still bright, ran down the post, and the bottom bolt slid easily when I pushed it.

Someone had come down in the dark and mended it.

Then I saw the knife.

It was a hunting knife with a black handle, driven point-first into the top of the gatepost.

The letters J.L. were burned into the grip.

I did not touch it.

I stood among the half-grown moonflowers and knew that the Alpha-to-be had been down here in the dark, hammering nails.

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