I Married the Alpha They Threw Away novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Second Breath
Neve Larch dies in childbirth under her mate's pillow, wakes on the morning of the Mating Moon, rejects Corbin in front of the pack and claims his discarded brother, and her bite makes Bram's dead scar smoke and his eyes flash gold.
My daughter was alive for one minute, and her father spent it deciding to kill her.
She came at dawn, in the back bedroom of the Kingsbury house, in July.
Imogen had sent Hattie, my midwife, home an hour before.
"I raised you," she'd said, stroking my wet hair. "Let me be the one."
So it was my husband's mother who lifted the baby onto my chest.
A girl.
Then she opened her eyes, and they were silver.
Silver.
Corbin took her out of my arms before I could stop him.
He held her up to the window and looked at her for a long time.
"Silver," he said. "Mother was right."
Imogen went out and closed the door very softly behind her.
I screamed his name and tried to get up, and couldn't.
My daughter stopped crying.
I don't know what he did.
I only know the room went quiet, and he laid her down on the dresser.
Then he picked up my pillow and came to the bed.
"Don't fight it, Neve," he said. "It's easier."
I fought it anyway.
I tore his wrist open with my nails.
The last thing I saw was the wedding ring I'd bought him, pressing down over my face.
I woke up gasping.
There was no pillow.
There was a slanted ceiling with a water stain shaped like a rabbit.
My narrow attic bed in the Kingsbury house, where I'd slept since I was a baby in a basket.
My hands flew to my stomach.
It was flat.
There was no ring on my finger.
On the nightstand, my phone said September 14th.
The night of the Mating Moon.
Ten months before I died.
Somebody knocked, and the door opened before I could answer.
"Up, sleepyhead," Imogen sang.
She came in with a cup and saucer, the way she had every morning of my life.
Silver-blond hair, pearl earrings, soft gray cashmere.
"Your tea," she said. "Drink it all. You'll need your strength tonight."
She kissed my forehead.
Her lips were warm, and I said, "Thank you."
She went downstairs humming.
I carried the cup out to the landing and poured every drop into her fern.
That night the whole pack crowded into the log hall at the edge of the village.
The unmated ones stood in a ring under the big skylight, waiting for the moon to clear the roof.
I stood in the ring in a thin green dress Imogen had picked out.
The pack had always called me the dud.
The foundling whose wolf never came.
Sienna Bracknell sat in the front row in a white fur collar, smiling at me.
Last time, I hadn't known she was in Corbin's bed.
The moonlight came down through the glass and touched my shoulders.
The pull hit me in the chest.
It dragged me one step forward, then two.
Across the ring, Corbin's head came up.
Sandy hair, bright blue eyes, the Alpha's coat.
He smiled, slow and pleased, and the pack began to cheer.
He crossed to me and took my hand.
His thumb stroked the inside of my wrist, right where my nails had once torn his open.
"Say it, Neve," he murmured. "Everybody's waiting."
The pull begged me to say "I take you."
I'd said it last time.
I said, loud enough for the back wall, "I, Neve Larch, reject you, Corbin Kingsbury, as my mate."
The hall went dead silent.
Corbin's hand jerked out of mine.
He doubled over, one fist on his chest, and made a sound.
Imogen rose from her chair in the front row.
She looked heartbroken.
"Oh, sweetheart," she said gently. "You know the law. A girl who rejects her mate with no claim on her is gone by sunrise."
She spread her hands to the pack.
"Unless someone here will claim her."
Nobody moved.
Nobody would, against the Alpha.
I turned around and looked at the back of the hall.
He was standing by the door with a gutted deer over his shoulder.
The outcasts paid a tithe of meat every Mating Moon, and somebody had to carry it in.
He was the tallest man in the room, with long black hair and a beard and a canvas jacket gone thin at the elbows.
Bram Kingsbury.
The Alpha's elder brother.
Six years ago his wolf had died at his own ascension feast, and the pack had thrown him away.
They called him the Ruin.
I walked the whole length of the hall to him.
Every wolf in the pack turned to watch me do it.
"I claim him," I said.
Bram set the deer down on the floorboards.
His amber eyes were flat and tired.
"You don't know what you're claiming."
"I know exactly what I'm leaving."
Something moved in his face.
"I accept," he said.
The hall erupted.
The claim had to be sealed before moonset, with a bite.
I took his canvas collar in both fists and pulled it open.
A ragged scar ran from the base of his throat across his collarbone, black-veined.
I put my teeth to the skin just above it and bit down hard.
The scar smoked under my mouth.
Bram's whole body went rigid against me.
I pulled back, tasting blood and something.
His eyes weren't amber anymore.
They were burning gold.
The whole hall went quiet again.
In the front row, Imogen's wine glass shattered in her hand.
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