He Left My Rejection on His Desk, So I Signed It Myself novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Desk
On the night of her tenth mating anniversary Tilda finds Corwin's signed rejection decree, still warm from the seal, and signs her own name beneath his before walking out through the hall.
The whole pack was drinking to my marriage in the hall downstairs while I stood in my husband's study and read the end of it.
It was the night of our tenth mating anniversary.
Maud had sent me up here.
She caught my elbow between the second toast and the third and pressed a lamp into my hand.
"Corwin left something on his desk for you," she said. "He's been jumpy about it all week. Go and look, and I'll cover for you."
She squeezed my fingers, the way she had every week for ten years.
Maud was the only person at Kestrel Ridge I had told about the letter.
It had come nine weeks ago, in my dead father's handwriting, and it stopped in the middle of a sentence because the last page was missing.
I had put it in the cedar box under our bed and told no one but her.
"Wait for the anniversary," Maud had said. "He's softest then."
So I had waited, and practised, and tonight I was going to tell him.
I opened the study door with my shoulder and set the lamp on the desk.
A single sheet lay in the middle of the blotter, bordered in black.
Across the top it said, in capital letters, DECREE OF REJECTION.
Below that was one plain line.
I, Corwin Bexley, Alpha of Kestrel Ridge, cut the bond between myself and Tilda Stradling.
His signature sat under it, sharp and slanted, the way he signed every order.
Under his name was a second line with my name typed beneath it, and nothing written above.
The red seal at the bottom was still soft.
It dented under my thumb and came away warm.
He had stood in this room not long ago and pressed his ring into that wax.
Then he had walked downstairs and sat at the head of the table and let me enjoy my own anniversary.
I read the line again.
I did not cry, because nobody was there to see it.
Ten years, and he could not say it to my face.
I knew how this worked.
One signature on a decree leaves the cut ragged, and the wolf who was rejected bleeds from the mouth until spring.
I had watched a she-wolf spend a whole winter that way, on one name.
Two signatures cut it clean.
I was not going to spend my winter on my knees for Corwin Bexley.
So I took his pen from the stand and wrote Tilda Stradling under his name.
The bond tore.
Ten years of him at the back of my head went out all at once, and the room went very quiet.
I was on the floor with my cheek against the desk leg and a taste of copper in my mouth.
Downstairs a glass shattered.
Then two hundred voices shouted at once, and I knew he had felt it too.
I got up and wiped my chin on my sleeve.
I left the decree where it lay and took the lamp.
The hall went silent when I came in.
Corwin was on his feet behind the high table with both hands flat on the wood.
His face had no colour in it.
He looked at me and did not blink.
I walked the whole length of the hall past two hundred wolves, and nobody moved.
My mating cord had gone slack on my wrist, black and silver, ten years old.
I untied it and laid it beside his plate.
"It's signed," I said. "Both names. Happy anniversary, Alpha."
His eyes dropped to the cord and stayed there.
He said nothing at all.
I waited for a word, any word, and none came.
Oswin rose from the chair beside his, calm as ever, and tapped his glass for quiet.
"The Luna's seat is empty," he said. "Maud will take it until the Alpha says otherwise."
Maud was already at the foot of the dais, in the blue dress she kept for weddings.
She looked at me with wet eyes and mouthed, I'm so sorry.
Corwin did not tell her to stop.
He did not tell anyone anything.
I turned and walked back down the hall the way I had come.
A stable boy brought my mare to the steps without being asked.
The gatekeeper took one look at my face and swung the gate wide.
I rode through it with nothing but the dress I was wearing and my father's ring on a chain.
I had gone fifty paces beyond the lamp when a man stepped out of the dark onto the road.
It was Corwin, in his black coat, with his hand already on my bridle.
He had not come through the hall door behind me.
He had gone around by the kitchen yard to be here first.
"I read your father's letter this afternoon," he said. "Nine weeks, Tilda."
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