Fated to My Mate's Uncle novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Ford
The day Carys learns she's pregnant she hears her husband in bed with his brother's widow, rejects his mark in front of the pack, and flees across the river into the arms of the man her nose once exiled, who turns out to be her fated mate.
"Harder. God, Gregor, harder."
The voice came through the guest room door at the top of our stairs.
Then a laugh, low and breathless.
"Shh. Keep it down. Our son's right down the hall."
I stopped on the top step with one hand on the rail.
The pregnancy test was in the back pocket of my jeans.
Two pink lines.
Five years of marriage, three doctors, and a whole pack whispering the word barren behind my back.
I had driven home from the clinic in town with the window down, singing.
I had come upstairs to tell my husband.
The bed in the guest room knocked against the wall.
I didn't need to open the door.
I'm a scent-reader. Reading people is my job.
Gardenias and sweat and Gregor's aftershave rolled under the door and hit the back of my throat.
Charmaine.
My brother-in-law's widow.
She had lived in our house for eight years, ever since Angus drowned at the ford.
"For the boy's sake," Gregor always said.
The boy was born seven months after his father's funeral.
The whole pack called him Angus's last gift.
I had smelled Gregor on that child every day of his life.
I'd told myself it was family scent. Uncle and nephew.
Our son.
I went back down the stairs without a sound.
I sat in my truck in the driveway with both hands on the wheel.
I didn't cry.
I waited.
Twenty minutes later, Gregor came out the front door with his tie in his hand.
He tapped on my window and smiled his Alpha smile.
"There you are. We're late for the Moon Supper. You're not wearing that, are you?"
He leaned in and kissed my cheek.
His mouth smelled like her.
"I'll change," I said.
"Hurry up. Tonight's a big night for the boy."
He drove off with Charmaine in the passenger seat and her son in the back.
I went upstairs to the guest room.
The bed was made again, neat as a hotel.
I pulled the pillowcase off her pillow, folded it into a plastic bag, and pressed out the air.
A scent like that lasts weeks sealed up.
Then I put on my blue dress and drove to the pack hall.
The Moon Supper is the biggest night of our summer.
Four hundred wolves at long tables under the rafters, venison on the grill, kids running between the benches.
Gregor stood at the head table with his silver ring catching the lantern light.
Charmaine sat at his left hand.
My chair was on his right.
"Friends," he called, and the hall went quiet.
"Five years ago I took a Luna."
He put his hand on my shoulder, right on top of his mark.
"She's given me five good years. Just no pups."
People laughed.
Somebody near the back said, "Not for lack of trying, Alpha!"
More laughter.
Charmaine covered her mouth with her napkin.
"But the Moon looks after her own," Gregor said. "She gave me my brother's boy."
He waved the boy up to the table.
He was eight, skinny, in a clip-on tie, and he looked scared to death.
"Tonight I name him my heir. My Luna will swear him in."
That's the custom.
The Luna puts her hand on the heir's head and says she'll guard him as her own.
Gregor looked down at me.
So did four hundred people.
I stood up.
I looked at the boy, and I was sorry, because none of this was his fault.
"No," I said.
Gregor's smile didn't move.
"Carys. Sit down. You're tired."
"I won't swear to him."
"Sweetheart."
"Ask your Luna why," I said. "Not me. The other one."
Every head in the hall turned to Charmaine.
Her face went white under her makeup.
Gregor's hand closed on my shoulder hard enough to bruise.
I took it off me, finger by finger.
Then I said the old words, loud enough for the back tables.
"I, Carys Kinnaird, reject the mark of Gregor Kinnaird."
The hall went dead silent.
One of the elders half rose from his seat. "A rejection has to come before the elders, Luna. There has to be a hearing."
"Then schedule one," I said.
Gregor laughed, easy and warm.
"She's been crying all week over another empty month. Please forgive her."
People nodded. Of course. Poor barren Carys.
The test burned in my back pocket.
I didn't touch it.
If he knew there was a pup, he'd never let me out of that house.
I walked down the center aisle between the tables.
Nobody stopped me.
Behind me Gregor said, very quietly, "Bring her home. She's not well."
Two of his enforcers peeled off the wall.
I ran.
I kicked off my heels in the parking lot and ran barefoot down the path through the cottonwoods.
The river was a quarter mile down.
Kinnaird Ford.
Pack land ends at the near bank.
Past it is the burn, thirty thousand acres of black snags, and no pack wolf ever crosses.
That's where the exiles live.
I could hear the enforcers crashing through the brush behind me.
June snowmelt had the Bitterroot running high and brown.
I waded in up to my knees, then my waist.
The cold punched the air out of me.
"Luna!" one of them shouted from the bank. "Don't be stupid! Come back!"
I kept going.
At the middle the current took my legs out from under me.
I went under.
Brown water. Rocks. My dress wrapped around my knees.
I thought of the two pink lines and kicked for the surface.
A hand caught the back of my collar.
It hauled me up and out, and dumped me on the gravel of the far bank.
I coughed up half the river.
A big man knelt over me, soaked to the chest, his fingers still knotted in my dress.
His bare forearm pressed against my neck.
Skin on skin.
The bond hit me.
My wolf came up off the ground inside me, howling.
Mine.
Then I breathed in.
Woodsmoke. Pine pitch. Something underneath like hot iron.
I knew that scent.
I'd sworn to it eight years ago, with my hand on a drowned man's jacket, in front of the whole pack.
The scent of the man who drowned Angus.
My husband's uncle.
Gray eyes looked down at me in the last of the light.
"Hello, Carys," said Fraser Kinnaird.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend