I Died in His Arms, Now I'll Marry Another novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Feast
At her rival's betrothal feast, Bronwyn wakes in her own past and asks the Alpha whose knife killed her to marry her, planning to kill him.
Linnet stood on the high table and told two hundred wolves she was going to marry Lucian.
The whole hall roared.
Cups hit the tables. Somebody started a drum.
I stood near the hearth with my own cup in my hand and tasted silver.
There was no silver in the cup.
It was the taste from the long grass, three years from now, when it came up with my blood.
I had died on that grass.
I looked across the hall and saw the man who had held me while I did it.
Her older brother, the Alpha of this pack, was clapping for her.
He was thirty, alive, and wearing the green coat I would one day bleed all over.
He had a good face. I had never once told him so.
My knees went soft, and I put my hand on the hearth stone to keep standing.
"Bron."
Lucian had come up beside me, smiling the smile that used to make me forget my own name.
"You're pale," he said. "Don't take it hard. Nothing changes between us. You'll always be the one I can trust."
Last time, I had stood in this exact spot and believed him. "Thank you, Lucian," I said.
He squeezed my arm and went back to his bride.
Linnet Harcourt looked down from the table and found me in the crowd.
She was gold from head to boot, glowing, and she lifted her cup to me alone.
"Bronwyn Ferrow! My oldest enemy!" she called, and the hall laughed. "Come up and drink to me, or I'll tell everyone about the pond."
I laughed, because everyone was watching and she had made it easy.
Linnet and I had spent twenty-four years trying to beat each other at everything.
Races. Marks. Seats at the Moot.
Last time, when she took the man I wanted, I had picked her brother in front of this same hall to hurt her.
I married him inside a month.
I used his name and his table for three years, and I never gave him anything back.
I did not mean to do that again.
At the end of the hall, the big doors opened.
A cold wind came in, and a man came in behind it.
He was broad through the shoulders, dark hair going grey at the temples, a scar through his left eyebrow.
Heads turned all along the benches.
"Torin Vaughn," someone muttered. "Coldwater. He's come about the grain road."
The gate warden stepped in front of him with a hand out.
"Weapons, Alpha. Every guest leaves their blade at the door."
"I haven't got one to leave," Torin said.
His voice was low and even.
"My knife was stolen last spring. I've been going without."
The warden shrugged and let him through.
Linnet had come down from the table to stand beside me.
"Is that him?" she said. "I wanted to meet him. They say he never leaves the north."
I did not answer her.
I was looking at the grey wolf's head on the buckle of his belt.
I knew that crest.
I had seen it on the hilt of the knife in my ribs, a hand's width from my heart, while Lucian's riders sat their horses at the edge of the field and did nothing.
So that was the man.
He walked the length of the hall alone.
Nobody offered him a seat.
My father, Alpha of Dunmere, was at the table of honor with his jaw set.
He had planned this night for a month.
I was supposed to look at Ronan with sweet shy eyes, and let Redmere think Dunmere's daughter was his for the asking.
Ronan Harcourt, Linnet's brother, had already glanced over at me twice.
Last time I'd have gone to him.
I put my cup down on the mantel.
I walked into the center of the hall, where the drum had stopped and people were turning.
"Alpha Vaughn," I said.
My voice carried.
Torin stopped and looked at me.
His eyes were brown and tired, and they did not care at all who I was.
"I'm Bronwyn Ferrow, daughter of Dunmere," I said. "Coldwater needs the grain road. Dunmere holds it."
My father stood up so fast his chair fell over.
"Bronwyn."
I didn't look at him.
"Take me as your wife," I said. "Tonight, in front of both our packs, so nobody can take it back."
The hall went silent.
Linnet's cup stopped halfway to her mouth.
Across the room, Ronan had gone very still.
Torin looked at me for a long time.
"Why me?" he said.
"Because you have no reason to lie to me," I said.
That was true. It just wasn't the reason.
"I accept," he said.
He said it quietly, the way a man settles a price.
A hundred voices broke out at once, and over them I heard my father shouting my name.
I stood there with my heart pounding against my ribs.
I had come back from the dead with one plan.
I would marry the man who killed me, and I would find out why.
And then I would kill him.
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