Married My Alpha's Brother novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: The Gown

Rae steps out of her wedding gown in front of the guests and drops it at Shayla's feet, then finds wolfsbane under the skin of Granger's legs, and he tells her the blade had his family's crest on it.

The gold was gone before I could blink twice.

His eyes were black again, and flat, and bored.

"Smile," he said. "They're watching."

I smiled at three hundred wolves.

Then I took the grips of his chair and pushed.

Nobody threw rice.

The side corridor off the Great Hall runs past the coat room and the kitchens to the east door.

It's the fastest way out.

Everybody knows it.

Jagger knew it too.

He was waiting by the coat room with Shayla on his arm and half the wedding party behind him.

"Rae."

I stopped the chair. "You said I was dismissed."

"I said leave the gown." He nodded at Shayla. "It's paid for. My money, my Luna."

Shayla smoothed her blue dress. "I don't need it today. The mating ceremony isn't for a month."

"She'll need it fitted," Jagger said. "Take it off."

Guests kept spilling into the corridor behind him. They had champagne flutes. Some of them had their phones out.

Granger's hands closed on his armrests.

"Jagger," he said. "Walk away."

"Or what? You'll roll over my foot?"

A few people laughed. Fewer than before.

I put my hand on Granger's shoulder.

"It's fine," I said.

"It isn't."

"I know. Let me."

I reached behind my back and found the top of the zipper.

The seamstress had sewn me into it an hour ago. It took me three tries to get it moving.

The corridor got very quiet.

I pulled the zipper down to my waist.

I slid the silk off one shoulder, then the other.

Four layers of white fell around my bare feet with a sigh.

Underneath I had on a plain cotton slip that came to my knees.

I'd bought it at the Target in Missoula for nine dollars.

I stepped out of the gown.

I picked it up in both arms, all eleven pounds of it, and walked it to Shayla.

She didn't move.

I dropped it on the floor in front of her white sandals.

"It pinches under the left arm," I said. "Have them let it out."

Somebody behind Jagger said, "Oh, damn."

Shayla's face went pink, then red.

Jagger opened his mouth.

I'd already turned my back on him.

I took the grips again and pushed my husband out the east door into the sun.

It's a quarter mile from the Lodge down to Granger's cabin. Gravel the whole way, downhill, with a ditch on one side.

I walked it barefoot in my slip with my veil still pinned in my hair.

Granger didn't say anything until we were past the pines.

"You've got gravel in your feet."

"I'm aware."

"There's a path through the grass on the left. It's softer."

"Is it wheelchair accessible?"

"No."

"Then I'll keep the gravel."

He made a sound I didn't recognize.

It took me a second.

He was laughing.

The cabin was dark logs with a green metal roof and a plywood ramp somebody had nailed up in a hurry.

An old horse barn leaned behind it.

Above that, smoke curled from Wanda Starkey's chimney.

Inside, everything was clean and bare. One bedroom. One woodstove. One very large bed.

He wheeled himself to the stove and lit it without looking at me.

"There's a flannel shirt in the closet," he said. "Take any of them."

I took the blue one. It came to my knees too.

Then I washed the gravel out of my feet in his sink and got my bag.

"Pants off," I said.

He looked up.

"I'm your nurse before I'm anything else," I said. "When did anyone last look at your legs?"

"Six weeks ago. You did."

"Then it's overdue."

He held my eyes a long moment.

Then he unbuckled his belt.

I helped him onto the bed and got his jeans down past his knees.

He lay on his stomach without being asked.

He knew the drill.

The scars across the backs of his thighs were where I'd left them. Two long seams, healed pink and tight.

I'd stitched them myself.

But they weren't the same.

Under the skin, spreading out from both scars, ran thin black lines.

Dozens of them. Fine as hair. They branched up toward his hips and down behind his knees.

They looked like ink dropped in water.

I pressed one with my thumb.

It didn't blanch. It didn't move.

My stomach dropped.

I'd seen this once before, at twenty-one, in a rogue the border patrol dragged in.

The black lines had reached his heart in four days.

"Granger," I said. "This isn't a spinal injury."

He didn't turn his head.

"The healers said the cut went into the nerve," I said. "They lied, or they didn't look. This is wolfsbane. Somebody put wolfsbane on that blade."

The stove ticked.

Outside, a crow called from the barn roof.

"Granger. Did you hear me?"

He turned his head on the pillow and looked at me.

"I know," he said. "The blade had our crest on it."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend