Unmarked: My Mate Refused, The Alpha King Didn't novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Eight Months

"Let go of her, Alpha Marrow," Thane said.

He hadn't raised his voice, and my father's hand came off my arm anyway.

"She's my daughter, Majesty."

"She's under my roof for seven days. Which door would you like to go out of?"

My father looked at me once.

It wasn't anger in his face, it was something closer to fear, and I didn't understand it.

Then he walked out with his back stiff and his hands in fists.

Pippa hooked her arm through mine.

"Come on. You need food, and my brother needs to stop looking at you like that in front of the Moot."

She took me to the long kitchen behind the great hall, sat me on a flour barrel, and put a plate of cold chicken and bread in my lap.

"Eat."

I ate.

"The refused wives," I said, with my mouth full. "Do they often name a protector?"

"There hasn't been one in my lifetime," Pippa said. "Nobody remembered the law until you said it out loud. Is that what you read in the Stanmore library?"

"It's what I read at night, because I couldn't sleep."

"Eight months of it."

"Eight months."

She picked a crust off my plate and chewed it.

"I'm going to tell you something, and you're going to say nothing to him."

"All right."

"My brother came home from your wedding early."

I stopped eating.

"I was in the hall when he walked in. He said the Stanmore bride was beautiful and the vows were long, and that he had a headache."

She didn't smile.

"That night, around midnight, he woke up screaming. There was a hole in his chest under the collarbone, and it has not closed since."

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