He Stole My Title, So I Took His True Heir novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Cloak on Another Woman
Willa steps onto the moon platform to find Greta in her cloak with a baby. She signs Bram's form that night with her divorce already filed, and at dawn learns he filed first.
At the winter border ceremony, three hundred wolves watched my husband's adjutant walk onto the moon platform in my cloak.
I was eight months pregnant, and I had come out of the trees with the widows' cabin list still in my hand.
The Luna holds the founder's ebony staff at this ceremony.
The Luna lights the four boundary markers beside the Alpha and reads out the year's provisions.
That Luna was me, and my wolf-crested cloak was on Greta Sorrel's shoulders.
She held a baby boy in her arms, not a month old, wrapped in a grey blanket.
She kept turning the stitched edge of it inward, where it wouldn't show.
The stone screen above the dais lit up with white letters: a new heir for the Alpha bloodline.
The platform cheered.
My husband stood beside her, a hand at her back to steady her on the step.
His name is Bram, we have been married seven years, and he was smiling his easy smile, the one he wears when he is about to hand me something to carry.
Three years ago I had found him and Greta together in a border hunting cabin.
He had sworn on his mother's grave that she was reassigned to a supply station in the south and I would never see her in private again.
I had believed him, and that was the last thing I gave him that I couldn't take back.
His uncle lifted a glass. "Ironwood has finally welcomed the next generation of its bloodline!"
Someone near the front asked when Greta had become the official mate.
She dropped her eyes and smiled.
Bram didn't say no.
"Tonight the child gets the territory's blessing first," he said.
The territorial witnesses wrote down three names. Bram. Greta. The baby.
I looked for a friendly face at the edge of the platform.
Some of them had stood at my wedding. Some got gifts from me every year, gifts I chose and signed with Bram's name.
They saw me at the edge of the forest path. They went pale.
Then they looked away.
Nobody was surprised, and that was the worst of it.
They had eaten at my table and asked about my pregnancy, and they had known the whole time.
The baby inside me kicked so hard I put a hand under my ribs.
Bram saw it. He came down the steps to me and took my elbow.
"Willa, you're tired," he said, loud enough for the front rows. "A pregnant wolf is unstable at a ceremony like this. Let the guards take you to the side hall."
I looked at the guard captain. I had paid his mother's hospital bill out of the widows' fund.
He wouldn't look at me either.
They walked me off the platform between them, in front of everyone.
In the side hall there was a bench, a space heater and a window onto the platform.
I watched Greta lift the founder's staff with her free hand.
I did not scream. I sat down and put both hands on my belly.
Bram came to the side hall near midnight, alone, with a single sheet of paper and a pen.
"It's only temporary," he said. "Greta and the baby need the Alpha family's protection list, and the list needs a Luna's name. Sign your authority over to her until the next full moon. Everything comes back to you after that."
I read it start to finish.
It said what he said it said, and one more thing.
It said Willa Brandvold agreed that any child born to her before the next full moon would be recorded under the Alpha's guardianship.
I looked at him.
He looked at the pen.
"Please," he said. "You know I can't do this without you."
He had said that to me for six years, and every time it had been the end of a conversation.
"All right," I said.
I signed.
His shoulders came down and he kissed the top of my head. "That's my Luna."
He left whistling.
My phone buzzed in my coat before the door shut.
My lawyer had written: Filed. Divorce, withdrawal from Ironwood, and revocation of your vow. Stamped 11:52 p.m. It's done once you cross the gate.
I had signed his paper so he would sleep tonight.
So I packed a bag and walked the north road in the dark with one hand under my belly.
The north gate opens at dawn. I reached it as the sky went grey.
The guards stood in the road, shoulder to shoulder.
The phone buzzed again.
My lawyer's message was only three lines.
Bram's counter-petition was stamped at 10:40 p.m. It lists your unborn child as Ironwood property. He filed an hour before we did.
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