Killed Pregnant by My Alpha Mate, I Woke Six Years Early and Chose His Rival novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Rite
Ione wakes on the Moon Rite stone one breath before her mate's bite, refuses him in front of both packs, and the rival Alpha's hand lands on her bare back; she claims sanctuary.
The silver went in just below my navel, and it burned.
Rowena Vesper held the knife with both hands and leaned her whole weight into it.
Viggo held my arms behind my back and said into my hair, "Don't fight it, Luna."
I was seven months pregnant, and I felt my daughter kick once against the blade.
Then she stopped.
The feast hall floor was cold under my cheek, and somebody was shouting a long way off.
A voice close to my ear said, "Hold on, little wolf, I'm here."
I didn't know whose it was.
Everything went white.
I opened my eyes on a cold stone, with the sun going down in my face.
I was kneeling in a white dress, and there was a ring of wolves around me in the dusk.
My hands came up to my stomach.
It was flat and whole, and there wasn't a mark on it.
"Ione," Viggo said above me, soft and pleased. "Look at me."
I knew this exact moment.
It was the Moon Rite on the ridge above our pack grounds, six years before I died.
In a breath he would take my neck in his teeth and mark me as his mate.
The old me had knelt here, shaking with joy, and let him.
I had spent six years afterward with a silent wolf in my chest.
My husband had smiled for the pack and hit me where the dresses covered.
I lifted my head.
Viggo Keene stood over me in a black shirt, twenty-five years old, with his hand already at my hair.
Rowena stood behind his shoulder in her gamma's leathers, with her white-blonde braid over one arm.
The silver-bladed knife was on her belt.
She smiled at me, the way she always had.
"No," I said.
Viggo's fingers stopped in my hair.
"Ione," he said, quiet and warm. "You're nervous. Everyone is. Lean your head back."
I stood up.
My knees held, and it surprised me how much I wanted to laugh.
Around the ring, two hundred Ashfall wolves watched me, and on the east side stood the visiting Alphas from three packs.
They had come for the Rite, and nobody had come for the girl.
"I won't be your mate," I said, loud enough for the back row. "I refuse the bite. I refuse the rite."
A murmur went around the ring.
Viggo's face stayed pleasant, but his jaw moved.
"You're overwhelmed," he said. "Come here."
He caught my wrist.
His grip was tight, and I knew that grip down to the bone.
"Let go of me," I said.
"Not in front of everyone," he whispered.
"That's the reason I'm doing it in front of everyone."
His fingers dug in, and I heard the leather creak in his glove.
There was silver wire sewn under the knuckles, and I'd learned its taste on my own face.
A hand closed around Viggo's wrist from the side.
It was a large hand, tanned, with a pale ridge of scar across the back.
"Let her go," said a deep voice.
I turned my head.
I had never seen him this close.
He was the tallest man in the clearing, with dark-blond hair tied at his neck and a close beard.
His eyes were the palest grey I'd ever seen.
Tavish Rowe, Alpha of Black Pine, the rival pack across the ridge.
No Black Pine Alpha had stood at an Ashfall Rite in forty years, and everyone knew it.
"This is Ashfall business, Rowe," Viggo said.
"She said no," Tavish said. "Ione Strathern said no."
His eyes had gone to my stomach first, before my face, and stayed there a half second too long.
Viggo's lips went white.
He tried to pull his arm free, and Tavish didn't let it move an inch.
Then Tavish's other hand settled in the small of my back, where the dress was cut low, on bare skin.
Heat went through me.
My wolf, who had stayed silent in my chest for six years of the other life, sat up and howled.
It was the strangest feeling I'd ever known.
I swayed into his palm before I could stop myself.
His thumb moved once against my spine, slow and certain.
"Tell me what you want," he said, low enough that only I heard it.
I didn't have to think.
"Alpha Rowe," I said, to the whole clearing.
"I claim sanctuary under the old law. I ask Black Pine to shelter me until the full moon."
Viggo let out a harsh laugh.
"You're not in your right mind."
"She's in it," Tavish said. "The law gives her nine nights."
He let go of Viggo's wrist, and Viggo stumbled half a step back.
Rowena's hand dropped to the knife.
I looked straight at her, and she looked away first.
"Black Pine accepts," Tavish said, to the ring, to the Alphas, to the dusk. "She is under my roof and my protection."
He took his jacket off and put it around my shoulders, and it fell to my knees and smelled of pine smoke and warm skin.
"Walk with me," he said.
I walked with him through the parted wolves, past staring faces that had never once looked at me kindly.
Behind us Viggo said, in a voice every wolf could hear, "You have nine nights, Ione."
I didn't turn around.
"Get in the truck," Tavish said.
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