The Alpha's Wolfless Luna Filed for Divorce novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Kensington Roof Law

Joss drives Orla to her late mother's cottage, Winifred freezes her cards and posts guards, and at midnight Torin arrives with claws out and his silver cuff cracked.

Joss drove with both hands on the wheel and didn't speak for the first twenty minutes.

"Say something," I said. "Say anything. Say the weather."

"It's going to rain," Joss said. "Also your husband just lost his wife in front of everyone he has ever met, and he stood there with his mouth shut. That's the whole forecast."

"For thirty days he's still my husband."

"Technically."

I laughed, and it hurt my cheek, and the cut was already sealed shut.

I didn't ask Joss about that.

At a gas station outside Port Adair he went in to buy water, and I tried to pay for a coffee with the card Torin had given me four years ago.

The machine beeped and showed me a red DECLINED.

I tried it again, and then I tried the second card.

Joss came back out and looked at the two cards in my hand.

"Winifred," he said. "She froze them before you reached the garage. The Kensington accounts are pack money, and she runs the accounts."

"I have two hundred and twelve dollars of my own," I said. "I earn it proofreading catalog copy at night."

"Then you're rich," Joss said, and paid for the coffee.

The Lowell Valley sits an hour inland, where the road turns to gravel and the firs close in.

My mother's cottage was at the far end, a grey house with a crooked porch.

I had not slept in it since the week I married.

The key was still under the third flowerpot.

Inside, the air smelled of cold wood and old tea.

My mother's coat hung on its hook by the door, exactly where she had left it.

"This place belongs to me," I said. I wasn't sure which of us I was telling. "The whole valley does. It was my dowry, and the Kensingtons took the pack's lands with it. If the divorce goes through, it comes back."

"If," Joss said.

"Why 'if'?"

He looked toward the window, and I looked too.

Two Kensington guards stood at the end of the drive, under the one working lamp.

I knew both of them by sight. One of them had brought my breakfast tray up for two years.

I opened the door and walked out to the gate.

"Luna," the older guard said, and then he swallowed. "Ma'am. The Alpha's mother says you're to come back to the tower until the moon."

"I'm not your Luna. I took the ring off in front of all of you."

"You're Luna until the Blood Moon, ma'am. Kensington roof law."

"That is Winifred law," Joss said from the porch. He had not raised his voice. "Wolf law says the Luna in release goes where she likes."

"She's the healer, sir," the guard said, miserable. "It's not for us to argue with her."

"Then don't argue. Stand there."

I looked at the guard who had carried my breakfast tray.

"Is the gate locked?" I asked.

"No, ma'am."

"Good. Don't come through it."

He nodded at the ground.

Nobody breaks into a valley house while its owner is inside.

That was old law, older than the tower, and even Winifred's guards knew it.

I went back in and locked the door anyway.

Joss made tea in my mother's chipped kettle and refused to take the bedroom.

"I'll sit on the porch," he said. "I've sat in worse places for him."

"For Torin?"

"For you," Joss said. "I decided that around the time his mother opened her mouth tonight."

He took his tea and a blanket outside.

I lay on my mother's narrow bed in the green dress, with the blood dry on my collar.

I thought about the papers on the table.

I thought about the way his hand had signed without once checking what it signed.

I did not cry, and I was proud of that until about one in the morning.

Then headlights swung across the ceiling.

An engine came up the gravel and stopped hard.

I got up and went to the window.

Torin's truck sat at the gate with the door hanging open.

He stood beside it in his black suit, with his shirt torn open at the collar and his right hand curled against his chest.

There were claws on that hand.

They were long and dark, and they shouldn't have been out, because Torin had not shifted in front of me once in four years.

On his wrist, the silver cuff his mother had made for him hung cracked clean through.

He looked up at the cottage.

He found my window at once.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend