My Mate Broke Our Bond, So the Northern Alpha Claimed Me novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Hers to Break

Brogan did not reach for a weapon.

He had none on him. He looked at the silver at Sorcha's heart and then at her face.

"No," he said.

"No?" Corbin's voice rose. "Give up the claim."

"I will not give it up because you hold a knife to her."

"Then I'll kill her."

"You won't."

Brogan lowered himself to his knees on the cold stone, slowly, with a hand against the wall.

The black lines stood out on his throat.

Corbin stared at him.

"What are you doing?"

"Making sure you understand me." Brogan did not look at him. He looked at Sorcha. "My claim was never mine to trade. It was yours to give, and it is yours to break."

"Brogan," she whispered.

"Say the word, and I walk out of this keep tonight and never come back. I will tell the Moot you were never mine."

His voice was steady, and his hand was not.

"Or say the other word. Either way it is you. Not him. Not me."

"You'll die," she said.

"Yes."

"If I send you away, you'll die."

"Yes. It is still yours to say."

The hall was very quiet.

Sorcha felt Corbin's hand tremble against her ribs, and she felt something in her chest go loose.

She had been traded for a year, and no one had asked.

Now a dying man was on his knees on a stone floor, giving her the whole choice, with a knife at her heart.

"I keep it," she said.

Brogan's eyes closed.

"Say it louder," Corbin hissed.

"I keep the claim," Sorcha said clearly. "It's mine. And I'm done being told what to do with it."

She drove her elbow back into Corbin's gut.

The knife slid across her ribs, and she did not feel it.

She spun in his grip and caught his wrist in both bleeding hands.

"Let go."

"I can't."

"Let go of me, Corbin."

He lunged for Brogan instead, the blade high.

A dark shape came out of the corridor at a run.

Tomas Ashdown hit his daughter's old mate with his whole shoulder and drove him into the wall.

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