His Pups Called Me Mama. He Called Me Nobody. novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Off My Land by Moonrise
Five years of raising the Alpha's pups end the night Elspeth pulls his daughter out of a silver-poisoned lake and he banishes her for it, never knowing she's the lost Silver Moon heir, to be crowned in twenty-one days.
I raised the Alpha's children for five years, and he never learned my name.
Tonight I dragged his little girl out of a lake full of silver.
She had stopped breathing.
He threw me out for it.
"Pack your things, Omega," he said. "I want you off Langtry land by moonrise."
Aldric Langtry stood in the nursery doorway in the black coat from his Luna ceremony.
He smelled of moonwine and of the woman he had claimed an hour ago.
She was right behind him.
Cordelia Mossgrave, his chosen Luna, leaned on the wall in white silk and smiled at me.
I was still dripping on the rug.
My palms were raw and blistered where the silver in the water had chewed through them.
Half an hour ago, Clover had slipped away from the party on the lawn.
She was four.
She walked down the boathouse steps and straight into the lake.
Someone had poured silver into that water.
Three hundred wolves stood on the shore and watched a child go under.
Not one of them could touch the lake without burning.
So I went in.
Me, the wolfless nanny.
The nobody.
"Alpha," I said, and kept my voice level. "Clover wasn't breathing. I breathed for her for two minutes on the stones before she..."
"Before you put on a show for three allied Alphas," Cordelia said.
She stepped past him into the light.
"The child was paddling. You shrieked like a hysterical little omega and shamed this whole pack."
I looked at her.
Clover's lips had been gray.
I had pushed my own breath into her small chest on cold rock while the whole pack stood frozen.
And I was the problem?
"Cordelia's right," Aldric said.
He wasn't even looking at me.
"Her father's pack sealed our alliance tonight. You embarrassed my Luna in front of him."
Something in me went very quiet.
Five years.
Five years of Arlo and Clover.
Arlo was seven now. Clover was four.
I walked them through their nightmares at two in the morning.
I taught them their letters at the kitchen table.
I sat with Arlo through four nights of fever last winter while his father was at a summit on the other side of the continent.
Aldric Langtry had never once tucked them in.
In five years he had never once asked what I was called.
To him I was "Omega."
To his children I was Mama.
That was the real reason Cordelia wanted me gone, and I knew it the second I saw her smile.
"I'm cutting you out of the pack bond," Aldric said. "Swear the silence oath and you leave in one piece. Refuse, and..."
"And what?" I said.
He looked at me then.
For one breath something moved behind his eyes.
His wolf went still.
Then it was gone.
The kitchen staff had come up the back stairs to see.
Two of his enforcers stood in the hall.
I made sure they could all hear me.
"No," I said. "I won't swear it."
Cordelia's smile slipped.
"I pulled your daughter out of that water," I said. "If anyone asks me what happened tonight, I'll tell them."
Aldric's jaw set.
He said the severing words.
The bond tore loose inside my chest.
I didn't flinch.
I wouldn't give them that.
"Can I say goodbye to them?"
"No," Cordelia said, before he could open his mouth. "A clean break is kinder."
Kinder.
Through the cracked door behind them, I heard Clover cough, small and wet.
Arlo's night-lamp glowed through the gap.
A little wooden moon.
I carved it for his seventh birthday, because his father forgot.
Again.
My throat burned.
I didn't cry.
Never in front of people like them.
I reached into my cardigan pocket and took out the small tin I'd carried every day for five years.
I set it down on the nursery threshold, right at the Alpha's feet.
He frowned at it.
"Goodbye, Alpha," I said.
I walked out of the Langtry pack house with my coat and two burned hands.
Cordelia caught up with me on the front steps.
She held her silk skirt off the wet stone and leaned close.
"Funny thing," she murmured. "Silver doesn't burn a human."
I kept walking.
Because here is what Aldric Langtry didn't know.
What Cordelia didn't know.
What no wolf in that whole glittering, bloodthirsty world knew.
I was never wolfless.
That tin on his threshold held wolfsbane.
I had swallowed it every single morning for five years, to keep my wolf in a cage and my scent in the ground.
Eighteen years ago, someone burned the royal family of the Silver Moon alive in their own hall.
One child got out.
No one ever found her.
They were all looking at her tonight.
In twenty-one days, on the Hunter's Moon, the Lycan Council would crown me Queen.
Every Alpha on this continent would have to kneel.
Including the one who just threw me out.
None of that mattered tonight.
What mattered was two children waking up in the morning and finding me gone.
I was going to get them back.
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