The Wrong Groom on My Wedding Night novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Four Years Later

Four years of refused release letters later, Lena meets Crispin Rooke at the winter banquet: her husband's face with a scar through the eyebrow, and the smell of cedar smoke from her wedding night.

Four years later, I still had not found him.

I had written to the council a dozen times asking for my release.

Every letter went through my father-in-law's desk, and every one came back with the same words stamped in red: Not yet.

Nobody ever told me what I was waiting for.

The winter banquet was the one night of the year when all the packs of the Cascades sat under one roof.

The hall smelled of pine boughs and roast venison.

Three council Alphas sat at the high table, in fur-lined coats, and my father-in-law poured them wine.

Leon sat beside him with Dinah on his right, in the seat that should have been mine.

She wore a cream dress and a pearl comb.

He had announced her as "our honored guest," and the whole pack had clapped.

I sat in the second row with a plate of food I wasn't eating.

I was the Luna of Redfern, and my chair was beside a pillar.

Pat leaned over from the next seat, a healer's pin still on her collar.

"If you stab that venison any harder," she whispered, "the Alpha will have to apologize to the deer."

I put my fork down.

"I need air."

"You need a drink," Pat said. "Go to the buffet. I'll cover for you."

I went.

Up at the high table, Leon laughed at something Dinah said, and he did not look my way once.

He hadn't touched me since the wedding.

Not a kiss, not a hand on my back, and I had stopped waiting for either.

My shoulder had ached all night, which it did whenever Leon sat close to Dinah.

I had never told anybody that.

I had never told anybody that for four years, there had been a second pulse under the scar.

Slow and steady, not mine.

It sped up when I was angry, and it went quiet when I cried.

I thought I was going mad.

The buffet table stood at the back of the hall, under a window.

A man stood at the far end of it with his back to me, filling a plate.

He wore a worn canvas coat, and his dark hair was cut short.

When he turned, I stopped walking.

He had Leon's face.

The same jaw, the same dark brows, the same mouth.

But there was a pale scar through his left eyebrow, and his eyes were not warm and not shy.

They were tired and steady, and they found me across the table at once.

My plate nearly slid out of my hand.

"Ma'am," he said.

His voice was lower than Leon's.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to stare."

"You're not the one staring," I said.

He almost smiled.

It changed his whole face, and that scared me more than the likeness did.

"Crispin Rooke," he said. "I run the border for the Ridge pack. The Alpha sent me down for the treaty."

"The Ridge pack is two days north."

"It is."

"I know every face in this hall. I don't know yours."

"I came in late," he said.

His eyes dropped to the lace at my collar, then came back up, too fast.

"You're the Luna."

"I'm Lena," I said.

I don't know why I said it.

Nobody had called me Lena in the hall since the wedding.

He took a half step toward me and stopped.

Then I smelled it.

Under the venison and the pine and the wine, very faint, there was cedar smoke.

It was the pillow smell.

It was the smell of a bed I'd woken alone in, four winters ago.

My knees went loose.

My shoulder lit up with heat, and in the same moment the second pulse under the scar stopped dead.

Then it started again, fast and wild, matching mine.

Crispin Rooke put down his plate very carefully.

His hand was shaking.

"Luna," he said.

It was barely a word.

It was an apology and a question at once, and I knew he had never said it to anyone before.

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