I Rejected My Alpha Stepbrother, So the Moon Made Him Kneel novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Ring
Fionn speaks the Refusal before two hundred wolves and Mikel will not release him; Fionn bites down on his shoulder to break free, and his first heat breaks in front of the pack.
Mikel's hand closed on Fionn's jaw in front of two hundred wolves, and he did not let go.
"Say it again," Mikel said.
His thumb pressed into the hinge of Fionn's jaw, hard enough to leave a bruise.
The full moon stood over the ridge, and every wolf in the pack stood inside the stone circle to watch.
Fionn had said it once already.
He had said it clearly, in the old words, with his chin up: "I, Fionn Casey, refuse you, Mikel Urrutia, as my mate."
The silence after it had gone on so long that he heard the sagebrush move in the wind.
"I'll say it as often as you want," Fionn said around the fingers.
"Good."
"I refuse you."
Mikel's grip tightened.
He was taller by half a head and heavier by sixty pounds, and he had been the Alpha's heir since he was born.
For three years Mikel had put Fionn at the dogs' end of the table.
He had given him the cold bunk at the north end of the bunkhouse.
He had called him the stray in front of the hands.
Tonight the moon had pointed at the two of them, and the whole pack had felt it.
A pull had gone through the Ring, tight between Fionn's ribs and Mikel's.
Fionn's mother made a small sound at the edge of the circle.
Her husband, the Alpha, put an arm around her.
"A Refusal takes two mouths," Mikel said, low, for Fionn alone.
"I know the law," Fionn said.
"Then you know I haven't said mine."
"Say it," Fionn said.
"No."
The pull in Fionn's chest turned to heat.
It was a bad heat, a burn that spread from his sternum down into his belly and out along his arms.
The Refusal was supposed to cut.
Without the other man's answer it only burned, and Fionn could see in Mikel's face that it was burning him too.
Sweat stood on Mikel's temples, and his eyes had gone gold.
He still held on.
"You came into my father's house for the land," Mikel said.
"And you think you get to walk out with a speech."
"I never wanted your land," Fionn said.
"You never wanted anything of mine. Say it louder, stray. Let them hear."
That was the word that did it.
Fionn had heard it every day for three years.
Tonight, with the burn rolling through him, it broke something.
He turned his head into the hand, opened his mouth, and bit.
He caught the meat of Mikel's shoulder through the torn collar of his shirt and bit down until he tasted blood.
Mikel roared.
He should have thrown Fionn off.
Fionn braced for the fist, or the wall of the standing stone against his spine.
Instead Mikel's grip went slack, and his left knee struck the dirt.
It went down hard, with no warning.
For one breath the heir of the Urrutia pack was on one knee in the circle, with Fionn's teeth in his shoulder.
The moon flared white on the stones.
A sound went around the circle as a hundred and ninety-nine wolves drew air through their teeth.
Fionn let go and stumbled back with Mikel's blood on his mouth.
On the far side of the circle, Mikel's grandmother set her tin cup on the ground.
She was the pack's Seer, and she never put anything down.
Mikel rose.
He wiped his face with the back of his wrist, and the blood smeared across his jaw.
"A stumble," he said to the pack, and his voice carried over the ridge. "The ground's bad up here."
Nobody laughed.
Fionn's knees would not hold him.
The heat had stopped being a burn.
It had turned into something worse, a deep pulling ache low in his body.
He felt slick start to run down the inside of his thigh.
He knew what it was.
Every omega knew, and all of them dreaded it.
His first heat had come three weeks early, on the spring Claim Night, in front of everyone he had ever hated.
"No," Fionn said.
He tried to step away and his legs folded.
Mikel caught him before he hit the ground.
One arm went around his waist and one under his knees, and Mikel lifted him off the earth.
Fionn's head fell against his chest.
The smell of him, cedar and sheep wool and blood, went through Fionn and settled low in his belly.
"Put me down," Fionn said, and it came out as a moan.
"You bit me," Mikel said above him, quietly. "In front of my pack."
His arms did not loosen.
"Now you're burning, and there's one man in this county who can put it out."
"Not you," Fionn said.
"Only me."
Mikel turned to the pack and did not raise his voice.
"Nobody follows us. Anyone who comes near the Dry Creek road will answer to me."
Then he carried Fionn down off the ridge into the dark.
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