The Alpha's Wolfless Luna Filed for Divorce novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Terms

Orla sets her terms at the gate, Torin agrees too easily and collapses, and her palm silences his wolf. At dawn a huge black wolf is asleep across her doorstep.

I went out to the gate in my mother's old coat over the green dress.

The two guards had stepped back to the trees and found something interesting to look at on the ground.

Torin stood on the gravel with one hand locked around the gatepost.

The wood was splintering under his fingers.

"Joss," he said, without looking round. "Give us the yard."

Joss stood up from the porch, took his blanket and walked to the far side of the house, where he could still hear everything.

"You've got ten minutes," I told Torin. "You're on my road."

"The road is pack land."

"Then stay on the road."

His claws were going back in, slowly, one at a time.

His breathing was rough, and when he lifted his head his eyes were still gold.

"What happened to your cuff?" I asked.

"It broke when you took the ring off."

"That's not how cuffs work."

"No," he said. "It isn't."

He didn't explain, and I was too tired and too angry to make him.

"I have terms," I said.

He waited.

"One. You don't touch me. Two. You don't summon me, and I don't set foot in your tower. Three. You stay off my land."

"Agreed," Torin said.

"You didn't think about it."

"I've had four years to think about it."

"You didn't read the papers either."

"No."

"Why not?"

Something went across his face and was gone.

"I knew what you wanted," he said. "I've known for a long time."

That was supposed to be an answer, and it made me angrier than the silence had.

"Your mother froze my cards."

"I'll have them back by morning."

"I don't want them. I don't want one Kensington cent." My voice shook, and I hated that. "I want my valley back and I want thirty days of nobody in my house."

"Then you'll have both."

He pushed off the gatepost.

His knees went.

It wasn't dramatic. His legs simply stopped holding him, and he dropped sideways toward the gravel.

I caught him, because my body moved before my mind did.

My arms went around his shoulders, and my palm landed flat on his chest, over his torn shirt.

His heart was slamming under it.

And the wolf in him, the thing that had been snarling at me through his skin all night, went quiet.

The quiet went through him from my hand outward.

His shoulders came down, and his breathing slowed.

He let out a sound I had never heard from him, low and cracked and relieved.

"Don't move," he said into my hair. "One minute. Please."

His weight was heavy and hot against me.

I should have stepped back.

Instead I stood in the gravel and counted to sixty under my breath, with the cold coming off the firs and Torin Kensington holding himself up on a wolfless woman.

"That doesn't count," I said, when I finally let go.

"Count against what?"

"The terms. I caught you. You were falling."

"I was," he said. His voice was nearly steady now. "It doesn't count."

He walked back to the truck, which still had its door hanging open, and stood with one hand on it.

"Keep the ring off, Orla."

"You said please. In front of three hundred people. Why does it matter that much to you?"

"Because if you put it back on, my mother wins."

It was true.

I could tell it was true.

I could also tell it wasn't all of it, and I was too tired to push.

He got in and drove down the gravel with his lights off.

Joss came around the corner of the house holding two mugs.

"I'm not going to say anything," he said.

"Good."

"I'm going to think it very loudly."

I took the mug and went to bed in my coat.

I slept better than I had in four years, and I didn't ask myself why that was either.

At first light I opened the front door to let out the stale air.

Something enormous was lying across the threshold.

It was a wolf, black from nose to tail, bigger than any I had seen in the pack.

Its eyes were silver and open and fixed on my face.

It did not growl.

It put its head down on my foot and shut its eyes.

Out at the gate, the guards were gone.

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