Claimed by the Alpha I Hate novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Seal
On her eighteenth birthday Daisy's mate breaks their bond in front of the pack and chooses her bully; she tells the Warden to seal it, and is thrown off pack land.
At midnight on my eighteenth birthday, a crescent moon burned onto my left wrist.
It felt like a hot coin pressed into my skin.
Every wolf in the Ridgeback pack knew what it meant, because they had all stood in this circle for their own.
The mark meant a mate was standing somewhere in the crowd, and my body already knew where.
It pulled me toward Jarek Stoll, the Alpha.
I took one step across the frozen grass.
My mother held my elbow from behind and whispered, "Go on, baby."
She was thin and tired, and she had coughed all through the ceremony, but she was smiling.
Jarek stood at the center of the circle in his good leather jacket.
He was twenty-two, and in all my years in the pack school he had never said more than three words to me.
He looked at the mark on my wrist, and then he looked at the girl beside him.
Brida Fitch wore a white dress in the snow.
She had been at my school since I was nine, and she had cut off my braid in sixth grade, and I knew that smile.
It was the smile she wore when she already knew how the joke ended.
"Daisy Pennick," Jarek said, loud enough for the back rows.
"I feel the bond, and I break it."
The sound that went through the circle was not a gasp.
It was closer to a laugh.
"I reject you as my mate," he said.
"I choose Brida Fitch, who is stronger, and whose father stands with this pack."
Brida crossed the grass and slid her hand into his.
She did not even look at me.
I could not breathe, and my wrist felt as if someone had opened it with a knife.
Behind me my mother made a small sound I will hear for the rest of my life.
I understood in that one second that I had two choices.
I could stand there and let two hundred wolves watch me beg, or I could finish it myself.
I turned to the man in the grey wool coat at the edge of the ring.
He was the Warden, the judge the Northern Council sent to every break.
His job was to seal it with an iron ring.
I had never seen him before tonight.
He was tall and broad, with a scar through one eyebrow and a face that gave away nothing.
"Warden," I said, and my voice came out clear.
"I accept the break."
"Seal it now."
"I won't stand here to be looked at."
His hazel eyes came up to mine.
For a moment he did not move at all.
"Miss Pennick," he said quietly, "the law allows you a night to think."
"I don't need a night," I said.
"Do it."
He crossed to me and took my left hand in his.
His fingers were warm, and they were shaking.
He pressed the cold iron ring to the burning crescent.
"The break is sealed," he said, and his voice was rough.
The mark turned white and went numb, and then nothing in my wrist hurt at all.
Everything else hurt instead.
I saw him let go and grip his own left wrist hard with his other hand.
I did not wonder why.
I only thought that he had been fast, and that I would hate him for it.
Jarek was already talking again.
"Rejected wolves who are no one's family have no place on this land," he said.
"The Pennicks leave by dawn, and the cottage goes back to the pack."
"She's sick," I said.
"My mother is sick."
"Then she can be sick somewhere else," said Brida, sweetly.
She reached out and took the silver daisy pendant from around my neck.
My mother had given it to me an hour earlier as my birthday gift, and the chain broke in her fingers.
"A present for my new Luna," Jarek said, and the pack laughed.
Luna is the word for an Alpha's mate, and he said it looking at Brida.
Brida held it up to the torchlight and fastened it on her own throat.
I looked at the pendant, and then I looked at every face in that circle.
Not one wolf looked away, and not one of them stepped forward.
My mother's hand found mine and squeezed it, and she was coughing again.
"Keep the necklace," I said to Brida.
"I'll take it back off your neck myself."
I walked out of the circle with my mother leaning on my arm, and I did not cry until the truck doors were shut.
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