Father Sold Me to an Alpha, So I Signed My Sister's Name novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Name on the Line
Her father hands Linnea the bonding contract again and she writes her half-sister's name on it; he is thrilled until he reads it, and Daphne signs beside it.
My father slid the bonding contract across his desk for the fourth time and laid a pen on top of it, the good one he kept for my birthdays.
"Please, Linnea," he said. "Just read it once more."
It was the same cream page as the other three.
The name of the Alpha of the Blackmere pack was already inked on the top line.
The line for the bride was blank.
I had torn this page in half in front of him twice.
Last week he had given the old midwife thirty days to leave her cottage until I changed my mind.
She had delivered me.
She had been the only person in this house who held me the night my mother died.
My father is Roderick Hartwell, Alpha of Greywater, and nobody tells him no twice.
I picked up the pen.
My father stopped breathing for a second, and then he smiled.
He had not smiled at me like that since I was a little girl.
His hand went to the ring of keys on his belt and turned it over once.
He did that whenever Blackmere came up.
"Good girl," he said. "I knew you'd see sense."
I bent over the desk and wrote the bride's name in slow, neat letters.
Greywater ink is dark red and dries in a minute.
After that, nobody can take the name back.
I set the pen down and watched the letters darken.
My father leaned in to read.
The smile stayed on his face while his eyes went along the line, and then it slid off.
"That is your sister's name."
"Yes."
"I said you. I have said you for three years."
"The page says bride," I said. "It doesn't say eldest daughter. I read it twice."
He grabbed the paper in both fists.
"Conrad Mallory asked for you by name."
"Then Conrad can ask Daphne. She's told us at supper that she'd marry him tomorrow."
"She was joking!"
"She laughed after she said it," I said. "So did you."
My father's face went dark red, the same shade as the ink.
He slapped the desk so hard the pen jumped.
"You will not do this to me. I will have Nan Whitaker out of that cottage by dawn."
"Then do it," I said. "She can come and live with me."
"You have nowhere to live."
"I'll find somewhere."
The study door opened.
Daphne came in sideways with a tray, because she never learned to knock with her hands full.
She was twenty-one, small and fair, in a yellow cardigan with a hole in one elbow.
"Lin, you look terrible," she said. "I made tea. Honey in it, the way you like."
She put the cup in my hand, and her fingers were warm.
"Dad, don't shout at her. Whatever it is, I'll fix it. I always do."
She had fixed things for me before.
She had covered for me when I missed curfew at sixteen.
She had driven me to the hospital the winter I broke my wrist on the ice.
She had also been wearing my mother's silver crescent pendant since the day I turned fifteen.
She called it borrowed.
I had stopped asking for it back.
My father held the page out to her without a word.
Daphne read it.
Her eyes went to my name, which was not there, and then to hers, which was.
She did not gasp.
She did not cry.
She set the tray down on his desk very carefully, between the cup and the ink.
"Oh, Lin," she said softly. "You didn't."
"I did."
I waited for her to hand it back and tell me she wouldn't.
She picked up the pen instead.
She wrote her own name on the second line, the line for the Alpha's daughter, and her signature was as neat as mine.
The ink went dark.
She blew on it, and then she looked up, and she was smiling at me.
It was a real smile, wide and bright, and I had never seen it on her before.
"Thank you," she said. "I've wanted him for a whole year."
"You said at supper you were joking," I said.
"I say that when Dad is listening."
My tea went cold in my hand.
I had expected her to scream at me for signing her name.
Instead she had thanked me for it, and I did not know why that frightened me.
I did not reach for the page.
I had signed, and it was done, and I was done with this house.
My father laughed once, short and relieved, and he folded the page and slid it into his jacket.
"Well," he said. "That's settled, then."
He looked at the window and the road beyond it, where a long line of black cars had turned in at the gate.
"And just in time. Blackmere is here."
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