Caged No More: The True Heir's Wrath novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Courtyard
In front of four hundred wolves Ivy is accused of luring Corinne Dray to the rogues, her mate Dane calls for her death, her sister Bree smiles, and Ivy rejects him before the Venomfang trucks arrive.
The horns blew at dusk, and all four hundred wolves of my pack filled the courtyard to watch me be judged.
I stood alone in the middle of the packed dirt.
The torches on the stone walls threw long shadows across faces I had known my whole life.
Nobody would meet my eyes, and nobody stood within ten feet of me.
That morning my adopted sister had brought me my tea, the same as every morning for ten months.
"Drink it all, Ivy," Bree had said, pressing the cup into my cold hands. "You look so pale."
It tasted of iron, as it always did, and I drank it because she had made it for me.
On the steps she had squeezed my hand, and I had thought she was the only one on my side.
Dane stepped out of the torchlight.
He was my fated mate and our pack's Alpha, and his blue eyes were cold.
"Ivy Rennick," he said, loud enough for the back rows. "You sent Corinne Dray a message."
Corinne Dray was the sister of Jonah Dray, Alpha of Venomfang Pack, our neighbour across the Shadow Forest.
I had never met her in my life.
"What message?" I said.
Dane held up my phone and read from the screen.
"Take the old trail through the Shadow Forest tonight. The guards are off. Ivy."
A hiss ran around the circle of wolves.
"She walked it," Dane said. "Rogues found her on the trail, and now she lies in a coma. The Venomfang healers give her days."
My stomach dropped.
"That is not my message," I said. "I never wrote to her."
"It came from your number at four o'clock this afternoon."
"My phone was on the kitchen table all afternoon. Anyone in the house could have used it."
"Three people live in that house," Dane said. "You, me, and Bree."
I turned my head and looked at my sister.
Bree put both hands over her mouth and burst into tears.
"How can you say that, Ivy?" she sobbed. "I have cried for Corinne all day."
An old wolf near the front spat in the dirt at my feet.
"Shame on Amos Rennick's daughter," he said.
My father had been dead fourteen months, and they were using his name as a stone.
"Dane," I said, and I reached for the bond between us, hoping he would answer.
The bond pulled and snapped in my chest, and sharp pain ran through my ribs.
He was pushing his disgust straight into my soul.
"You deserve to die," Dane said quietly, and then louder, for the pack: "By the Pack Accord, Alpha Dray holds blood-right over the one who harmed his kin. I will hand her to Venomfang at moonrise."
Nobody spoke up for me.
Not one wolf out of four hundred.
Dane stood with his shoulders squared and his jaw locked, ready to fight me.
I had not even had the chance to open my mouth, and he had believed it all.
Bree stepped up behind him and pressed her face against his shoulder, trembling.
The pack watched her with soft, sorry eyes.
Over his arm, she turned her head just enough for me to see her face.
The tears on her cheeks were real.
But her mouth had curled, and she was smiling at me.
It was a slow, pleased smile, meant only for me.
Everything went quiet inside me.
For ten months I had been cold.
For ten months my wolf had not spoken once, not since the night I bonded with Dane.
And in ten months, Dane had not lost a single challenge.
I did not know why I thought of that then.
I only knew that no one in that courtyard was going to save me.
So I saved myself.
I lifted my chin and spoke so that the back rows could hear.
"I, Ivy Rennick, daughter of Amos and true heir of Grimjaw, reject you, Dane Locke, as my mate."
The pack gasped.
"You don't have the right," Dane snapped.
"I have every right," I said. "Your Alpha seat came through me."
The bond tore in half.
It hurt so badly that I went down on one knee in the dirt, and the whole courtyard went blurry.
I had braced for the pain to be mine.
It was not only mine.
Dane staggered back a step.
His hand flew to his chest.
A line of red ran from his nose over his lip, and he wiped it with his wrist and stared at the blood.
In ten months I had never seen him so much as sweat.
"What did you do?" he whispered, and for one moment he looked afraid.
Then he saw the pack watching him and straightened up.
"Chain her," Dane ordered.
Two guards I had trained beside took my arms and pulled them behind my back.
The silver links closed around my wrists, and they burned.
Bree sobbed on the steps, one hand on her locket.
Then the great gates of Grimjaw swung open from the outside, and headlights flooded the courtyard.
Three black trucks rolled in, and the first to step out was a tall man with a scar through his eyebrow.
Jonah Dray had come for me hours before moonrise.
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