My Alpha Arrested Me for Stealing His Money? Find Another Doormat Luna, I'm Out novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Sanctuary

Stonecrest feeds her, its healer finds twins and a starved wolf, and Cedric posts a theft notice to every pack. At dawn he is at the gate, grey-faced and shaking.

Ronan Schroeder drove me across the river without asking where I wanted to go.

He turned the heater up all the way and set a paper bag on my lap.

Inside were two cold chicken legs and a bruised apple.

"Eat," he said. "I left the feast early and I was saving them for myself."

I ate both legs and the apple before we reached the bridge.

He didn't say a word about it.

At the Stonecrest gate, two wolves in wool coats stood up from a guard hut and stared at my nightgown.

"Open it," Ronan said. "She's a guest."

His lodge was smaller than ours, with a long kitchen at the back and a wood stove that ran all night.

A woman in a flannel robe came in rubbing her eyes, and Ronan said she was Stonecrest's healer.

"Sit," she said to me. "Take the coat off. Let me look at you."

She pressed two cold fingers under my jaw, then laid her palm flat on my stomach.

She was quiet for a long time.

"How long since you ate a full meal?" she said.

"Tonight was the first in three months."

"Who told you that you'd gained weight?"

"The Beta."

The healer's mouth went thin.

"Flora, you are five months along and lighter than you were the day you were mated. I can see your collarbones."

"They told the allies I was fat."

"They lied to the allies."

She fetched a small machine from a cupboard and pressed a cold probe to my belly.

A fast, soft thudding filled the kitchen.

Then a second one, a little off the first.

I put both hands over my mouth.

"Twins," the healer said. "Two strong heartbeats, and both of them are living off what is left of you."

Ronan turned his back and looked out the window for a while.

"There's something else," the healer said, quieter. "Your wolf. I can't feel her. She's gone so far down that I'd have thought you were human."

"She hasn't spoken to me in months."

"She stopped talking because she was hungry. We'll fix that, but it will take weeks."

Ronan set a plate in front of me.

It held a ham steak, two eggs, buttered bread and a heap of mashed potatoes.

"Nobody here is going to count it," he said.

I cried into the potatoes, and he kept pouring milk and said nothing.

Near two in the morning, his phone buzzed on the counter.

He read the screen for a long moment and then held it out to me.

It was a message sent to every Alpha in three states, under Cedric's name and the Redhollow crest.

The Luna of Redhollow, Flora Bradford, has stolen pack funds and fled the territory while carrying the Alpha's heir. She is a thief. She has taken Redhollow's heir without leave. Any pack that shelters her will answer to Redhollow.

I read it twice.

I had been in that yard.

I had stood in front of him and said exactly what I had spent and exactly why.

He had gone upstairs after I left and written this.

"He sent it before the feast was over," Ronan said. "Look at the time."

The message was stamped with the minute I walked out of the gate.

He had not even waited to see if I came back.

"Philippa wrote it," I said. "She'll have typed it and he signed."

"Maybe," Ronan said. "A Beta who writes what her Alpha signs is still a Beta. It's his name on it."

I didn't have an answer.

"Here is what Redhollow can't do," Ronan said. "Stonecrest law is older than this notice. A pregnant female who flees her pack in fear and reaches another Alpha's gate has thirty days of sanctuary. Her own Alpha can't cross the border to take her. Not for a thief charge, not for an heir."

"Can I claim it?"

"You have to say it out loud at my gate, in front of my guards. You walked in with me. I'd like to hear you say it."

I stood up.

My knees shook, but I went back out through the kitchen, across the yard and down to the guard hut where the two wolves in wool coats were warming their hands.

"My name is Flora Bradford," I said. "I'm pregnant, I fled in fear, and I'm asking Stonecrest for sanctuary."

The older guard looked at Ronan.

"Granted," Ronan said. "Thirty days."

Both guards put a fist to their chests, and I understood that it was a real law and not something he had made up for me.

I slept in a narrow bed in a room above the kitchen, under three blankets, with a full stomach.

For the first time in months, I didn't wake up hungry.

I woke up because someone was pounding on the gate.

It was barely light.

Down in the yard the guards were standing with their hands on their belts.

Through the window I saw a black truck stopped on the road outside the border stone, and a man getting out of it.

He was grey in the face and holding on to the truck door with one hand.

It was Cedric, and he was shaking.

← 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