I Wed the Ruthless Alpha, and Now His Wolf Kneels to Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Lamp
The night after her grandmother's barn burns, Marja walks into the Dry and offers to hang a brass check; Madern names the lamp, Petroc takes her wrist to put her out and lets go at her word, and she lights the dead lamp herself and carries it to him.
The night after my grandmother's barn burned, I walked into the pack's hall and told the Cap'n I wanted his wardens.
Forty wolves turned on the benches to look at me.
No one from the farms had stood on that floor since my brother's brass check was bent and dropped in an iron box.
Petroc Bolitho sat at the head of the long table with his boots crossed, and he did not get up.
"The pack sends wardens to its own checks," he said.
I still smelled of smoke, and my coat was black to the elbows from carrying water to a barn that was already gone.
"My grandmother's barn burned last night," I said. "She burned her hand pulling the cow out. It's the fourth farm on our road since October."
"The farms keep their own sauna court," the Cap'n said. "Your people have never hung a check."
"Then I'll hang one."
Somebody on the benches laughed out loud.
The hall was the old change house of a closed copper mine, a long brick room with iron stoves.
The benches were worn smooth by a hundred years of miners' boots.
Everyone called it the Dry.
On the north wall hung the Board.
It was a plank wall of iron hooks, and on every hook hung a numbered brass check.
They were the same tags the miners once carried down the shaft.
Two hundred and ten wolves had a check on that wall.
A wolf with a check had wardens, winter wood and a vote.
A wolf without one had none of it, and my brother had been without one for two winters.
A white-haired man in a deacon's black coat sat at the Cap'n's left hand and smiled at me kindly.
That was Madern Rosewarne, the Dry's Beta and the Cap'n's uncle.
On Sundays he read the lesson at the Cornish chapel.
"The Dry takes a check from outside only one way, Petroc," he said. "You know the old rite."
"Nobody has asked for the old rite in twenty years," Petroc said.
"Then nobody knows what it will cost the girl."
Madern turned to me with a courteous little nod.
"Look above the Board, my dear."
I looked up.
A brass miner's lamp sat on an iron bracket over the first hook.
It had a hooked spout and a ring to carry it by, and it was black with dust.
"That lamp has been dark since the Cap'n's mother died," Madern said.
"A new check from outside is hung when a wife of the Cap'n lights it from the stove."
"And then?" I said.
"She carries it across the Dry to him, before the whole Board."
"A wife," I said.
"Of course, there isn't one."
He sat back, pleased with himself.
Petroc stood up.
He was taller than I had been told, and heavier through the shoulders, with black hair going gray at one temple.
He crossed the floor without hurry, and forty wolves moved their boots out of his way.
"That's enough," he said. "Someone take her home."
Nobody did.
He took my wrist himself and turned me toward the door.
His hand was hot, even through my wet sleeve, and it closed hard enough to hurt.
Every wolf in that room had watched him bend a check with that hand.
He had dropped each one in the Box without giving a reason.
"Let go," I said.
I did not say it loudly.
He let go so fast his hand stayed in the air between us.
Nobody on the benches said a word.
Petroc looked at his own fingers, and then at me, and he frowned.
I had thought about that room for two winters, and I had thought I would be afraid in it.
I was too tired to be afraid.
A woman in a kerchief had come to the kitchen door with a dish towel in her hands.
That was Solange Lavigne, who kept the Dry's kitchen.
She looked from the Cap'n to me and said nothing.
"Is the lamp filled?" I asked her.
"Every winter," Solange said. "For twenty years."
She dragged a bench to the Board and held it steady.
I climbed up, took a splinter from the nearest stove, and lit the wick.
The flame stood up small and yellow.
I lifted the lamp down by its ring and carried it the length of the Dry in both hands.
Forty wolves watched me do it, and not one of them stopped me.
Petroc stood where I had left him, with his hand still half open.
I set the lamp in it.
His fingers closed over mine and over the brass, and they were shaking.
"Twelve wardens," I said. "On the Toivola road. Tonight. Say it to them."
He kept his eyes on the flame.
"Twelve wardens," he said to the room. "Toivola road. Tonight."
Three men went for the door at once.
Madern's smile was gone.
I took my coat off the bench and turned my back on the lot of them.
"Show me your house, Cap'n," I said.
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