Wrong Bond: Your Omega Is Driving Me Crazy novel · Chapter 28 of 32

Chapter 28: Free Man

Linden looked at Ivor.

Ivor was standing by the stones in his brushed black coat, with every clan in the Northmark between them.

He didn't move.

He didn't say a word to help.

He just looked back, and waited, the way he'd waited on the gold the first night while Linden decided whether to tell him anything at all.

"I walked into his hall of my own will," Linden said to the speaker. "I'd like to walk out of it the same way."

A murmur went round the moor.

The speaker turned to Ivor.

"Grayle? It's your claim. Your law."

Ivor came across the Ring.

He stopped in front of the speaker's stone, not in front of Linden.

"He was never gold," he said. "He was wet, and rude, and he dripped on a crown. I took him because nobody else would let him in." He looked out at the clans. "I release him. Write it down. Whatever the Hoard Law gave me, he has it back."

"You understand what that means," the speaker said. "If he's not yours, your law doesn't cover him."

"I know what it means."

"Any clan could take him in. Or not."

"He doesn't need taking in," Ivor said. "He needs asking."

The speaker looked at him for a long moment.

Then she made a mark on her scroll.

"Linden Whitby," she said. "A free man."

That was all.

No horns. No cheering.

Just the wind going over the heather, and the torches, and Linden's own two feet on the stone.

He had been his father's son, and Osric's treaty, and a dragon's treasure.

Now he was standing in the Ring belonging to nobody.

It was the strangest feeling of his life.

It lasted only a moment.

Then he turned around.

"Ivor Grayle," he said.

Ivor went still.

"You've had my bite on your neck since the spring cave," Linden said. "Everyone here can see it. But I gave it to you in a cave, with nobody watching, because you were dying."

He walked up to Ivor.

"I'm done doing things where nobody's watching," he said. "So I'm asking you here. In front of all of them. Not because of a law, and not because of a treaty, and not to save anybody. Will you be my mate?"

Somebody in the crowd laughed, high and shocked.

Omegas don't ask.

Everyone on that moor knew it.

Ivor didn't laugh.

He looked down at Linden from all that height.

Then the last dragon in the Northmark went down on one knee in the mud of the Ring.

The crowd made a sound Linden had never heard from a crowd before.

Ivor took Linden's hand in both of his.

His palms were hot as hearthstones.

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