I Faked My Death, and the Alpha at My Grave Has Lost His Wolf novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Before the Lodge
Zora hears the Chair tell the whole Lodge his wife will give it an heir 'when I say, or never', refuses the bond in front of two hundred people, and puts her Jeep into the flooded Lavaca so the pack will think she drowned.
My husband told two hundred people the Lodge would get its heir when he said so, or never.
He said it in his sale-barn voice, flat and easy, the one that reaches the back of any room without being raised.
I was standing at the back of the Lodge hall in my postal jacket, with a clinic envelope pressed against my ribs.
The envelope held a printed picture of our baby.
I had found out four hours earlier, in a clinic parking lot in the next county.
I had planned to tell Anton tonight in the kitchen with the door shut.
Instead I stood by the coffee urn and heard him give the Lodge his answer first.
It was the second Sunday of October, dues day, after Mass.
The long tables were crowded with kolaches and klobasnek, and the polka band was setting up under the stage lights.
Frank Matula had asked the question with his hat in his hand and a grin for the room.
"Three months married, Chair," he had called across the hall, "and the Lodge paid for the band."
People laughed, because Frank is easy to laugh with.
Then Anton said never.
In the front row the twelve Betas lowered their eyes.
Frank had glanced at them first.
Then Frank looked at my coat pocket, and at my stomach, and back at Anton.
Anton did not look at me at all.
He was looking at his hands on the ledger.
I have been married to Anton Vrana since July twentieth.
He came to my bed once, on our wedding night, with perfect manners.
Since then he has slept behind the door at the end of the hall.
I have lain awake every night and listened to him breathe through a wall.
The Lodge had matched us at the Easter dance, by the old custom, because my wolf turned toward his voice the first time he spoke.
I thought that meant something.
I thought it reached him, too, and that he was just a slow man who needed time.
I was wrong, and I was wrong in front of everyone, in a postal jacket, next to the coffee.
I do sums for a living.
I have carried Route 3 for four years and I know what everything weighs.
A man who says never in front of two hundred people has already weighed it.
I walked the length of the hall.
Nobody stopped me, and the band stopped playing.
I stopped in front of the Chair's table, where the bread women stand with the plate of salt bread for weddings and funerals and this.
My grandmother was the third woman in line, with her handkerchief up her sleeve.
I said the old words in the old order, loud enough for the back row.
"Before the Lodge, I refuse the bond."
The hall made a sound I had never heard from two hundred people.
The law is simple.
The refused man takes bread, says "I hold you," and the refusal is unsaid.
If he does not answer in a breath, the refusal stands.
Frank snatched the plate from the bread woman beside my grandmother.
His face had gone white under the red.
"Answer her, son," he said, and shoved the plate at Anton's chest.
Anton looked at the bread.
Then he looked at me, finally, and said, "Zora."
He said it once, quietly.
Then he said nothing.
My grandmother marked the silence out loud, as the custom says, and she did not hurry it.
"One," said Babi.
She put down the plate.
Behind me a woman started to cry.
I turned around and walked out through the whole Lodge, and no one touched me.
I did not cry in the parking lot.
I drove Route 3 north with both hands on the wheel of my mail Jeep, doing sums.
The Lodge does not let a wife leave.
I knew a cousin who tried it, to Victoria, and the Betas brought her back by Wednesday.
They do not chase the dead, though.
They bury them, and then they stop.
It had rained all week up in the hills, and the Lavaca was four feet over its banks by the time I reached Cedar Bottom.
The county had chained the low-water crossing.
I drove around the chain.
At the top of the ramp I took off Anton's ring and set it on the dash.
I told myself it was so the river wouldn't get it.
It was so I wouldn't have to carry it.
I took the bag I had kept under the back seat since July, without ever asking myself why.
I took my mother's ring, my grandfather's field glasses and the envelope.
I put the Jeep in neutral and set my shoulder on the door frame.
It rolled slowly down the concrete, and then the brown water took it.
The headlights stayed on under the surface for a long time.
Then they went out, and I was a woman who had drowned.
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