Marked by My Ex's Biggest Rival novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Second Place
On the night of Danica's Awakening, Kyler marks Desiree in front of the pack and offers Danica second place; she refuses, walks onto Brannigan land to die, and Roark Brannigan finds her, bites her, and says he's known she was his since June.
The fever hit me at moonrise, and the man who'd promised to save me wasn't there.
I was on my knees in the Awakening clearing, in a blue silk dress I'd bought for him.
Krista had curled my hair in my shop that afternoon and told me I looked like a bride.
Sixty Yardley wolves stood in a ring around the fire and watched me burn.
It felt like I'd swallowed a hot coal and it was climbing back up.
Somewhere under my ribs, my wolf woke for the first time and started clawing.
Every she-wolf knows the rule.
You get until dawn.
Before dawn, a male wolf puts his teeth in the place where your neck meets your shoulder, and his mark holds your wolf down.
If nobody does, she burns your heart out from the inside.
For two years Kyler had told me not to worry about it.
"I'll be there," he'd said. "I'll be the first thing you see."
I looked across the fire at the empty path from the packhouse.
An old woman in the ring caught my eye and looked away.
"He's coming," I said to nobody.
My voice came out cracked.
Then I heard car doors.
Kyler walked into the firelight in a beige linen suit, his blond curls still damp from a shower.
He'd showered.
He wasn't alone.
Desiree Chastain was on his arm in a white satin dress, her diamond studs catching the fire.
The Council chair's daughter.
She smiled at me.
Kyler didn't come to me.
He walked to the center of the ring and turned to the pack.
"Tonight the Yardley pack joins the Council," he said. "Desiree has agreed to take my mark."
Nobody cheered.
A few people clapped, slowly, because he was the Alpha and they had to.
Desiree tipped her head to one side and pulled her hair over her shoulder.
He bit her right there, in front of everyone.
She made a small pleased sound and looked straight at me while he did it.
The fever slammed through me so hard I fell onto my hands.
When I could see again, Kyler was crouched in front of me, wiping his mouth with his thumb.
"Don't look at me like that," he said quietly. "A Council seat, Danica. You understand what that means for the pack."
"You promised me."
"And I'll keep it. I'll mark you after. You'll be my second."
I stared at him.
"Your second."
"It's done all the time. You keep your shop. You keep me. Desiree gets the title."
Desiree laughed behind him.
"Second-mate bites heal ugly," she said. "Buy some turtlenecks."
"Four years, Kyler."
"Don't make a scene." He reached for my face. "Just say yes."
He looked so sure.
He thought I'd crawl.
He thought the fever would do his asking for him.
I pushed his hand away.
The silver wolf pendant he'd put on me when I was nineteen was hanging at my throat.
I wrapped my fist around it and yanked until the chain snapped.
Then I stood up.
My legs shook, but they held.
"Everybody hear this," I said.
The whole ring went quiet.
"I'm not his second. I'm not his anything. I'm not a Yardley."
I threw the pendant into the fire.
Kyler's face went white, then red.
"You'll be dead by morning."
"Then I'll be dead by morning," I said. "On my own feet."
I turned my back on him and walked out of the ring.
Nobody stopped me.
I heard Desiree say, "Let her go, baby. Saves us the paperwork."
The river was a quarter mile downhill.
On the other side of it was Brannigan land.
Yardley wolves don't cross the Larch. Not since Kyler's father and Roark Brannigan's father tore each other open on that bank eight years ago.
I walked straight into the water in my blue silk dress.
The cold hit the fever and turned my whole body to steam.
The current shoved at my knees.
I kept going.
I climbed out on the far bank, stumbled into the pines and went down.
The ground smelled like cedar.
My heart was hammering so hard I could hear it in my teeth.
I lay there with my cheek in the needles and watched the moon slide west.
At least it was quiet.
At least nobody was watching.
Then a twig cracked.
Boots stopped beside my head.
"Danica?"
I knew the voice.
I'd heard it in my own tattoo chair in June.
Roark Brannigan had come into my shop to get an old bite scar covered, sat perfectly still for an hour, and then walked out halfway through without a word.
I'd never found out why.
He crouched down and turned me onto my back.
His dark hair was in his eyes and he was wearing a cream jacket over a polka-dot shirt.
"Who did this?" he said.
"Your favorite person."
His jaw went tight.
"Yardley left you out here?"
"I left. He offered me second place."
Roark swore quietly.
He put the back of his hand to my forehead and took it away fast.
"Dawn's in under two hours," he said.
"I know what time it is."
"I can mark you."
I laughed, and it hurt.
"You hate my boyfriend."
"Ex," he said. "I was walking my sister Addison home along the ridge. We watched you throw something in the fire."
He didn't touch me again.
He just knelt there in the pine needles with his hands on his knees.
"I'm only doing it if you say yes," he said. "Say no and I'll sit here with you till it's over. You won't be alone."
My wolf went still for the first time all night.
Like she was listening.
"Why would you do that?" I whispered.
"Yes or no, Danica."
I thought about Kyler wiping Desiree off his mouth with his thumb.
"Yes."
Roark slid one arm under my shoulders and lifted me against his chest.
He smelled like cedar and smoke and something warm underneath that I'd smelled in my shop and pretended I hadn't.
He brushed my wet hair off my neck very gently.
"This'll hurt," he said against my skin.
Then he bit down.
The pain was white and huge, and then it wasn't pain.
It was silver.
It poured out from his teeth and went through my veins, and it put the fire out everywhere it touched.
My wolf lay down inside me.
I could breathe.
Roark pulled back and stared at my shoulder.
I turned my head and saw it too.
A thin ring of silver light was closing around the bite.
Every wolf in the valley knew what that meant.
A political mark heals plain.
Only a fated mark heals silver.
"That's not possible," I said. "You're not my mate."
Roark looked at me, and he didn't look surprised at all.
"I've known you were mine since June," he said.
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