They Hid My Fated Mate, So I Left With the Rival Alpha novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Who Wrote It

In front of both packs Hazel demands the writer, her own blood is on the page, her father says nothing, and she decides to cross the river.

I put the letter down on the head table, between Alpha Brendan's wine glass and a dish of my roast lamb.

"Somebody in this room wrote this," I said. "I'd like to know who."

Thirty wolves stopped chewing.

Alpha Brendan looked at the page, then at me.

He kept his smile on, the one that had never once looked fake to me.

"Hazel, sweetheart. Not here. Go back to the kitchen and we'll talk after."

"Read it," I said, and pushed it toward him. "Out loud."

He didn't touch it.

Behind me, Alpha Ronan had walked in and stood with his arms crossed against the doorframe.

His wolves sat very still at the long tables and watched me.

"It's your name," Brendan said gently. "It's your blood. You were eighteen, and you were afraid of leaving your father. Nobody blames you."

"I was never afraid of anything about leaving my father," I said. "I would have remembered cutting my own thumb and writing four lines to the Alpha of Blood Moon."

Then I stopped.

I did remember one night I had bled for my father.

My eighteenth birthday. The pack's blood toast.

Every wolf of the pack nicks a thumb and presses it to one white cloth, and the beta folds it away for luck.

That year my father had folded mine away himself, in his own pocket, and told me to go and enjoy the cake.

I looked at him.

Chester Bramley sat at Brendan's left hand with his big scarred fingers flat on the table.

He was looking at the lamb.

"Dad," I said.

He didn't lift his head.

"Dad, did you see me write this?"

"You were young," he said. His voice was hoarse. "What's done is done. Let it lie, Hazel."

That was not a no.

I stood there with the whole hall watching and felt the floor tilt.

Alpha Ronan pushed off the doorframe.

"Her scent didn't change when she said she never wrote it," he said, to the room. "Neither did his, when he said she did. One of them is very good at this."

He crossed the hall and stopped beside me.

Up close he smelled of pine smoke and cold stone, and his eyes were still gold.

"I don't care who wrote it," he said, low, for me alone. "I care that I stood in front of your gate for three days."

"Then care about this," I said. "That signature is a copy of mine, and I can't prove it. Your Seer can."

"My Seer?"

"A healer who reads bonds. Every pack knows about her. Take me to her."

Brendan stood up so fast his chair scraped.

"Absolutely not. Hazel, you will not cross the river with that man. As your Alpha, I forbid it."

I turned to look at him.

Brendan Wadsworth had been giving me pastry-stealing winks since I was twelve.

"Then take my name off the pack roll," I said. "Do it tonight, in front of everyone. I'll go as nobody."

Nobody in the hall moved.

Brendan's smile finally slipped, and what was underneath was fear.

"You can't be serious."

"I'm a very serious cook," I said. "Is the roll in your office, or do you want to fetch it?"

On the far side of the table, Luna Sorcha put a hand over her mouth.

She didn't look surprised.

She looked sick.

I noticed it, and I didn't understand it yet.

My father stood up slowly.

He was the biggest man in Silver Dawn and the only one I had ever run to.

"If you cross that river," he said, "you don't come back."

"Dad."

"I mean it, Hazel. I won't open the door."

"Then tell me why," I said. "Tell me why you'd rather lose me than let a healer look."

He said nothing.

He only stood there with his bad shoulder hunched and his eyes wet and his mouth shut.

I picked the letter off the table and put it in my pocket.

"Fine," I said.

I untied my kitchen apron, folded it, and left it on a chair.

Alpha Ronan watched me do it.

"You have until the ford," he said. "If my Seer says you wrote that, I'll bring you back across the river myself."

"If she says I didn't, you can carry my bag."

His mouth moved, once, almost a smile.

Then he turned to the big red-bearded wolf at his shoulder.

"Garth," he said. "Saddle one more horse."

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