I Survived My Father's Test and Took His Throne novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Toast
At her eighteenth birthday party, Dorian shoots Rhiannon's father and names her the killer; her uncle orders the guards to kill her on sight.
My fiancé shot my father in front of four hundred wolves, in the middle of my eighteenth birthday toast.
Ten minutes earlier, Dorian had fixed the pin in my crown with his own fingers.
"Stay close to me tonight," he said. "Whatever happens, I'll keep you safe."
I kissed his cheek and thought I was the luckiest girl in Wilton.
The Moonhall glowed with candles that night, and every Alpha in the kingdom had come to see the king's daughter turn eighteen.
My father stood at the head table with his gold seal ring on his right hand.
He had been smiling at me all evening.
The captain of his guard should have stood behind him.
But my father had sent the captain to the border at noon, and nobody had told me why.
A late guest had come in through the north gate after dark, wrapped in a grey cloak with the hood up.
Dorian had walked out to meet her himself.
She pressed a small lavender sachet into my palm, said "Happy birthday, Rhiannon," and was gone before the cake.
I tucked the sachet in my sleeve and forgot her.
Then my father raised his glass.
"To my daughter," he said. "She will be a better ruler than I ever was."
Four hundred wolves cheered.
Dorian stepped up beside me and put his hand on his ceremonial holster.
"Father-in-law," he said sweetly, "it's time."
I did not understand.
He drew the gun and aimed it at my chest.
I heard my uncle Percival say, quietly, "Now."
The shot cracked through the hall.
My father threw himself in front of me.
The bullet hit him in the chest, and he fell against me with his whole weight.
I went down on the marble with him in my arms.
His blood soaked through my birthday dress.
Nobody moved.
Dorian lowered the gun, and his face was calm.
"Seal the doors," he told the guards in blue.
They sealed them.
"Papa," I said. "Papa, look at me."
My father opened his eyes.
His hand found mine, and he slid the seal ring off his finger into my palm.
The red stone in it was warm.
"Take my throne," he whispered. "Sit the Test, Rhiannon."
I had been taught the Test since I was seven.
It was the old law of Wilton: after a king dies, his heir has three nights to win the oath of three Alpha houses, and whoever survives it cannot be overruled.
"Papa, don't talk," I said. "Please."
"Don't trust the ring," he said.
I did not know what that meant.
His fingers went slack in mine.
My father, the Alpha King of Wilton, was dead on the floor of his own hall.
Something inside me snapped open.
My wolf had never come in, not once, and everyone in Wilton knew it.
It woke now, with a scream that came out of my throat as a howl.
Four hundred wolves flinched.
Dorian looked at me for the first time without a smile.
Then he turned to the room and lifted his hands.
"Wolves of Wilton," he said, in the warm voice I had loved. "I am sorry you had to see this."
He pointed the gun at the floor and put his other hand on his heart.
"The king's own daughter shot him. She tried to take the crown early, and he stepped in front of me to stop her."
Gasps ran around the hall.
My mouth opened, but no sound came out.
I was kneeling in my father's blood, and I held no gun.
Dorian had put it in my lap while the hall was looking at him.
I felt the cold weight of it against my knee.
My uncle Percival stood up from the head table and straightened his glasses.
"I saw it with my own eyes," he said. "Poor Osric."
Percival was my father's brother.
He had held me at my naming ceremony.
I looked from one face to the next, the Alphas and the guards and the women who had sent me flowers.
Not one of them looked away from Dorian.
They believed him.
The old woman who had taught me to dance stared at the gun on my knee and covered her mouth.
A guard I had known since I was a child raised his rifle at me.
I could not fight four hundred wolves, and I could not win an argument in a sealed room with a gun in my lap.
I could still sit my father's Test.
So I closed my fist on the seal ring, and I stood up.
Dorian's smile came back, small and sure.
"Stop her," he said, and the guards in blue started toward me.
I threw the gun at his face and ran for the kitchen door.
Behind me, my uncle's voice rang off the high ceiling.
"Every guard in this hall," Percival said. "Kill her on sight."
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