His Mate, His Enemy novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Hall
Corinna loses her baby alone, walks into the pack hall to find her husband holding her best friend's newborn, and cuts the bond in front of everyone; Lorcan says he will never release her.
At dawn the whole pack stood in the lodge hall, and my husband was holding a newborn that wasn't mine.
I stood in the doorway in a bloodied nightgown and my father's old coat.
Nobody had seen me yet.
Lorcan had the baby tucked in the crook of his arm, and he was smiling down at it.
I hadn't seen him smile like that in a month.
Brynn sat in the big chair by the fire with a blanket over her knees, pale and wrung out.
Brynn, who had been my best friend since we were nine.
Six hours earlier, I had lost our baby on the bathroom floor.
I was sixteen weeks along.
At eleven the night before, Lorcan had texted: "Border meeting is running late. Don't wait up. Love you."
At midnight the cramps started.
Wolves in the same pack can talk in each other's heads, so I called his name through the link.
Nothing answered.
I called nineteen times.
I called Brynn's phone too, because she lived four doors down and she'd told me that afternoon, hugging me in the kitchen, that I was never to be alone with this.
Her phone rang out.
I'm the pack's nurse. I knew exactly what was happening and exactly what to do.
I did it alone, on the cold tile, with my own hand pressed against the wall.
When it was over I sat there until the bleeding eased.
Then the howl came up from the lodge.
It was the heir song, the long rising note the pack sings only for an Alpha's child.
I put on my father's coat and walked up the hill.
Now Lorcan looked up and saw me, and the smile left his face.
"Corinna."
The hall went quiet, one row of faces at a time.
Brynn pushed herself half out of the chair. "Cori, oh my God, you're bleeding. Somebody get her a chair."
She meant it. That was the worst part.
Nobody moved.
"Where were you at midnight?" I asked Lorcan.
He didn't answer.
"Where were you?"
"The baby came early," he said. "Brynn needed me. I was going to tell you, I swear to you, I was going to tell you this morning."
"Whose baby is it?"
He looked at the child in his arm.
Then he looked at the pack.
"Mine," he said.
Somebody near the back shifted.
"I called you nineteen times," I said. "I lost ours on the bathroom floor. Nobody came."
All the color went out of his face.
"Cori, I didn't know. I swear I didn't hear you."
"You didn't hear me for four hours."
He took a step toward me with the baby still in his arm, and I held up my hand.
Behind him on the mantel sat the old rite book, the one his father's father had bound in leather.
I had read one page of it once, shelving clinic supplies for the elders, and I remembered the law.
A mate may cut the bond herself when the other has taken another. The Alpha's consent is not needed.
So I crossed the hall and took the book down.
A folded card fell out of it and landed on the floor by my boot.
It was the same stiff card Lorcan had read our vows from at the wedding, in his father's slanting handwriting.
I set it on the table without opening it.
I took the silver knife from the hearth shelf and drew the blade across my left palm.
"Corinna, don't," Lorcan said.
I held my hand over the bowl until the blood ran down in a thin line.
"I, Corinna Marrin, cut what was made between me and Lorcan MacKinnon."
The old words came out of me steadily.
"He broke it, and I put it down."
The pain started in my chest and moved up through my throat.
Something tore.
It tore in me, and a half breath later it tore in Lorcan.
He dropped to one knee on the boards, and the baby cried out in his arm.
Brynn rose from the chair and took the child from him, and her face was white.
My wolf howled once inside my head and then went quiet.
I stood there with my hand dripping into the bowl, lighter than I had ever been.
Lorcan lifted his head.
His eyes were black and wet.
"It doesn't count," he said. "Do you hear me? You can cut it, but I won't sign the release."
The whole pack was listening.
"I don't release you, Corinna. I never will."
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