The Alpha King's Human Mate novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Seal

Before the council Haldane names Tavia his mate and puts her under his hand, Brangwen wins thirty nights, and the king collapses with fever.

I had forty minutes to re-stitch a king and wash his blood off my arms.

I used thirty-five.

When I finished, the new line across his shoulder was straight and tight, and he had not made a single sound.

"You're very good at this," Haldane said.

"I'm very good at everything I do when I'm angry."

He looked at me through his lashes, and the corner of his mouth twitched.

"Tell me your name."

"Tavia."

"Tavia," he said, slowly, as if tasting it.

Something low in my stomach turned over.

I told myself it was the lack of sleep.

"Linde," I added. "Tavia Linde. Not mate. Not yours."

"Not yet," he said, and stood.

He put on a clean black shirt over my bandage and did not wince once.

Osmond opened the door.

"They're waiting."

The Seal Room was round and low, with a ring of stone benches and three high chairs at the far end.

Two hundred wolves packed the benches and the walls.

Every one of them turned to look at me.

In the middle chair sat a woman I knew before she spoke.

She was tall and straight-backed, with steel-grey hair in a crown braid, a dove-grey dress and a silver ring shaped like a thorn.

"Brangwen Waverly," Osmond murmured at my shoulder. "Sunniva's mother. Watch her."

Sunniva stood behind her mother's chair, gloves folded, face sweet as milk.

Brangwen rose.

"My king," she said, in a voice like polished stone. "The Seal is glad to see you on your feet."

"Elder," said Haldane.

"We are told a human woman has seen you change."

"Yes."

"Then the Law is plain. She dies at dawn, or she is kept under lock and key until her own death."

A murmur ran through the benches.

I felt it on the back of my neck.

"The Law is old," Haldane said. "I know its words."

"Then you know that the king may not argue with it for a stranger."

"She's not a stranger."

Brangwen's eyebrows rose a quarter inch.

"She is my mate," he said.

The room exploded.

Wolves were on their feet, shouting, and I heard the word human spat from five directions at once.

I stood very still and kept my hands where they could see them.

Brangwen raised one finger, and the room went quiet again.

"A human," she said softly. "Mated to the Alpha King."

"Fated," said Haldane. "I knew her at the door."

"And does the human know?"

All those heads turned to me again.

I had a sensation I had only felt twice before, once at my parents' funeral and once in a tornado cellar.

I felt that the next sentence out of my mouth might be my last.

"I know that I patched up a man who showed up on my table with a bullet in him," I said. "That's all I know."

"You felt nothing?" Brangwen asked. "No pull? No heat?"

I looked at Haldane.

His face did not move, but his hand closed at his side.

"No," I said. "Nothing at all."

It was the truth.

I had stood next to a six-foot-four man with his shirt off for two hours and my heart had been perfectly steady the whole time.

Someone laughed, high and pleased.

"There," said Brangwen. "The bond is his alone. A one-sided fancy, which is the oldest weakness a king can have."

"Careful," said Osmond, very quietly.

"I claim her," Haldane said, loud enough to shake the lamp chains. "She is under the king's hand. Anyone who touches her answers to me."

That quieted them.

The king's hand was a real thing, then.

Brangwen's smile did not even flicker.

"The king's hand overrides the Law," she said. "But the Seal may test it. That is also law."

"Name your test."

"Thirty nights, until the Midwinter Moot. If the human survives among us without harm to our king, she may stay. If harm comes to the king while she is in his care, she hangs."

"That is not a test," I said. "That's a trap with a calendar."

The benches gasped.

Brangwen turned her pale eyes on me, and for the first time I felt her actually see me.

"You have a tongue, dog doctor."

"I have a medical licence," I said. "Which is more than your healer has, I'd bet. She left a bullet fragment in his shoulder."

I had no idea if that was true.

But I saw Brangwen's face change, just a hair.

A thin woman in the second row went white and looked at her lap.

"I accept," said Haldane.

"My king," Osmond began.

"Thirty nights."

He turned to me.

"If you will stay."

"Do I have a choice?"

"Always," he said. "I will not take it from you. But if you leave, I cannot keep them from you."

I looked at the room, at the three chairs, at Sunniva's gloves and Brangwen's thorn.

I had never walked away from a patient in my life.

"I'm staying," I said. "For the patient."

"Done," said Brangwen, and sat, and the whole room breathed out.

Haldane took one step toward me.

Then his knees folded.

He went down on the stone floor, and his shirt was wet with sweat, and the skin of his neck was burning under my fingers.

"Fever," I said. "Get him to a bed. Now."

Above me, in the high chair, Brangwen Waverly smiled.

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