The Alpha Postponed Our Wedding, So I Married Another novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: The Papers

Lavinia faints at the family table and Wynne's parents rage, but Wynne sends the dissolution papers anyway, and Gareth is on the platform at dawn.

"I know," I said.

The princess raised an eyebrow.

"Everyone in Kingsmere knows," I said. "Gareth wore the sling to every dinner for a year. He told the story at all of them."

"And you still want to marry the man who did it?"

"I want to leave. The marriage is the price of the ticket."

She studied me for a long moment.

Then she took a single sheet of paper from her desk and turned it to face me.

The service roll had nine names on it.

I signed the tenth.

"The train north leaves at dawn the day after tomorrow," she said. "Platform Nine."

"Tell your family you've joined the service. Don't tell them the rest. Nobody outside this room knows the term yet."

"They'll know soon enough."

"Yes," she said. "But by then you'll be behind my walls."

My mother held dinner at seven the next evening, the way she had every night of my life.

The Ashdale house smelled of roast lamb and beeswax.

Lavinia was already at the table when I came down.

She wore her white fur wrap indoors.

She looked lovely in it. She always did.

"Wynne," she said softly, and held out both hands to me.

I sat down without taking them.

My father carved. My mother poured.

Lavinia ate three bites of lamb and pushed the rest around her plate.

"Gareth called me after he called you," she said. "He told me you took it so well."

"Did he."

"He said you didn't even cry." She smiled at me over her water glass. "I told him that's just Wynne. Nothing ever touches her."

My mother reached over and patted my hand.

"Your sister has been through so much this year, darling. One more season won't hurt you."

"It won't," I agreed. "I won't be here for it."

My father stopped carving.

"I've joined the princess's peace service," I said. "We leave for Highmoor at dawn tomorrow. It's three years."

For a second nobody breathed.

Then my mother screamed.

It wasn't a word. It was just a sound, high and furious, and the wolf in her was in it.

"Three years? You're betrothed to the Redoak heir!"

"I was," I said. "I'm sending the Stowes the dissolution papers tonight."

My father's knife hit the plate.

His eyes had gone yellow at the edges.

I felt his wolf push at mine across the table, the old weight of a father's will.

When I was little, that weight could make me sit down mid-sentence.

I stayed exactly where I was.

"You will do no such thing," he said. "The Stowes are the best match this family has ever had."

"Then you marry Gareth."

"Wynne!" my mother cried.

Lavinia had put her fork down.

Her eyes were wet and enormous.

"Is this because of me?" she whispered. "Because Gareth was kind to me? I'd never forgive myself, Wynne. Never."

She pressed her hand to her chest.

She swayed.

Then she slid sideways out of her chair in a long, graceful fall.

She landed on the cushioned bench by the window.

She had landed on that bench every time since she was twelve.

My mother flew to her side.

My father bellowed for the housekeeper and the smelling salts.

Lavinia's eyelids fluttered, but only on the side facing the room.

"Look what you've done," my mother hissed at me. "Look at her. You've always been jealous of her."

"She fell on the soft side again," I said.

My father stood up.

He was a big man, and he had never once been loud with Lavinia.

He was loud with me now.

"If you walk out of this house tonight, you don't come back to it. Do you understand me?"

"Yes," I said.

I went upstairs.

I packed one bag.

Two wool dresses, my green cloak, my grandmother's old Eastmarch grammar, a hairbrush.

I took off the Redoak betrothal ring last.

It was a garnet set in a band of red gold, the oak leaf carved into the shoulders.

For six years it had been slightly too big for my finger.

Gareth had never had it sized.

Nobody stopped me at the front door.

Through the dining room arch, I saw my mother stroking Lavinia's curls.

Lavinia's eyes were open now.

She was watching me go, and she wasn't crying anymore.

My grandmother had the papers ready on her kitchen table.

She had drawn them up herself in her neat border hand, and her lawyer had sealed them that afternoon.

I signed my name at the bottom.

I folded the garnet ring into the envelope with them.

"Midnight," my grandmother said to the courier at her door. "The Stowe estate, the main house. Into the heir's own hand, and nobody else's."

The courier touched his cap and went out into the rain.

I slept for three hours in her spare room, under a quilt that smelled of lavender and woodsmoke.

At five, she walked me to Kingsmere North in the dark.

The station was all wet iron and steam.

Lamps hung along the platforms in long yellow rows.

The princess's private carriage stood at Platform Nine with its doors open.

A crowd had gathered to see the ten women off: families, reporters, half of capital society in their good furs.

I saw the flashbulbs first.

Then I saw who they were pointed at.

Gareth Stowe stood at the gate to Platform Nine in his dark Council coat.

He had my envelope in one hand.

He was looking straight at me.

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