His Mate, Her Choice novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Fourteen Nights

Before the pack the King names the moon law, Wynn sets her terms, and when he asks where she was born she says Hollowmere and his face changes.

Nobody on the stairs moved.

I felt the roll against my ribs and kept my hands flat on the desk.

Alpha Halvard recovered first. He had always recovered first.

"Your Majesty," he said, with a laugh that came a little late. "There must be a mistake. That is only our ward, the girl who keeps the records."

"There is no mistake." The King's voice was low and level. "I know my own mate."

Luna Ottilie came down one step, her hands folded, smiling the way she did when she brought me tea.

"Then we must tell you, with joy, that she is already promised. Wynn is to marry our Fenn. It has been arranged for years."

I looked at her.

Fenn looked at the floor.

I had never heard a word of it.

"Is that so?" the King said, to me and not to her.

Every wolf on the stairs turned their head. In eight years nobody had asked me a question in front of anyone.

My mouth was dry.

"I never agreed to it," I said. "Nobody has said it to me until now."

"Girls aren't asked," Fenn muttered. "It's a pack matter."

"It isn't," the King said.

He came down the last step and stopped an arm's length from my desk.

Close up he was taller than I had thought, with black hair and a scar through one eyebrow. His eyes were still gold.

"My name is Dain," he said. "You've heard the law, I think. Say it for the room."

I had copied it four times. I could have said it asleep.

"A bond is sealed only when the mate accepts it," I said. "Until the full moon she may refuse, and no one may speak for her."

"And a betrothal she hasn't spoken," he said, "is no betrothal."

Halvard's smile thinned.

"Your Majesty, with respect, the girl has been sheltered. She doesn't understand what she's being offered."

"Then she has until the full moon to learn." Dain didn't look at him. "Fourteen nights. I stay until then in any case. If she refuses me, I leave and the matter is closed. If she accepts, she says so herself."

He turned his gold eyes back on me.

"Do you want that?"

I wanted to say no. I wanted to say I had belonged to nobody for eight years and was not about to start.

But the people who had written me out of their books were standing on the stairs, and the King of all wolves had just taken my side in front of them.

I would be a fool to throw that away on the first night.

"Fourteen nights," I said. "I have terms."

A murmur went up. Somebody gasped.

"Go on," said Dain.

"You don't mark me and you don't claim me until the full moon. And you don't speak for me. Not to them, not to anyone. If I have something to say, I say it."

"Agreed."

He said it quickly, with no pause at all, and that frightened me more than a fight would have.

"I'll hold you to it," I said.

"I'd think less of you if you didn't."

He held out his hand, palm up, and waited.

Everyone was watching.

I thought of Ottilie's folded hands and of Fenn staring at his shoes. I put my hand in his.

His palm was hot.

The heat went up my arm to my shoulder and down through my chest. My knees went soft, and for a moment I couldn't hear anything but my own pulse.

He had heard it too. His fingers tightened and then, with an effort I could see in his jaw, loosened again.

"Sorry," he said, very quietly, for me alone.

"It's all right."

It wasn't. It was the best I had felt in eight years, and I was frightened of how much I wanted to hold on.

He drew his hand back and looked at the lamp, the slanted desk, the box of war rolls, the stone walls.

"They kept you down here."

"It's where the records are."

"How long?"

"Since I was twelve."

His jaw tightened. He glanced at the box, then back at me.

"Twelve. Where were you before that?"

Alpha Halvard cleared his throat. Ottilie's hands stopped moving.

I could lie. I could say Ironbark, as I had been told to say for eight years.

I thought of the brown roll against my ribs and of Tam sharing his blanket in the cart.

"Hollowmere," I said.

Somebody on the stairs swore under their breath.

Dain's hand, still held out, went completely still.

The gold in his eyes went out, and for one moment the Alpha King looked struck.

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