My Alpha Chose Her, So I Let Him Bury Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Ledge
Her Alpha husband chooses another woman over his pregnant mate, breaks her fingers to make her let go, and the river takes her. A golden-eyed stranger pulls her out, and she tells him to let her husband think she drowned.
My husband had one free hand and two women on a crumbling ledge, and he picked the one who wasn't carrying his son.
I was six months pregnant.
He looked me in the eye while he did it.
Then he broke my fingers, one at a time, until I let go.
It had started that morning with a text, the first he had sent me in three weeks.
Wolf Creek Falls. Noon. Wear something warm.
I cried over those five words like a fool.
I curled my hair and put on the blue dress he had once called "fine," and I had kept that word for two years.
Felicity Rainey was waiting at the trailhead in his gray hoodie.
She was an omega in our pack, small and blonde, with big wet eyes that people liked to pity.
"Morven!" She waved. "Cormac said you wouldn't mind if I came along."
He hadn't invited me on a date.
He had invited me to watch.
I turned to leave, and six rogues stepped out of the trees.
They smelled of old blood and wolfsbane.
They dragged us both to the edge of the gorge and threw us over.
We landed on a narrow ledge halfway down, with the falls roaring below.
Felicity screamed.
I pressed my back to the rock and covered my belly with both arms.
Through the mate bond I sent him the only word I had left.
Cormac.
He came.
His Alpha roar shook the canyon, and the rogues ran at the first sound of it.
They ran too fast.
He anchored a rope, rappelled down and landed beside us as the stone cracked under our feet.
"It won't hold both of you," Cormac said. "And the rope won't hold three."
His eyes dropped to my belly, to the extra weight, and his jaw went hard.
"Morven. Let go. Shift and swim for the bank. The pack will pull you out downstream."
"I can't shift." My voice broke. "I'm pregnant. You know a pregnant she-wolf can't shift, it would kill the baby."
"Don't lie to me."
His eyes went the color of ice.
"Eight years ago you left my brother to drown in Silver Lake and swam to shore alone. I saw you come out of that water."
"That's not what happened. Kai threw me the ring and he stayed in the water, he told me to go."
"Felicity can't swim," he said. "She's an omega. She has never shifted in her life. She would die."
Felicity sobbed into his neck.
"Cormac, I'm so scared."
Over his shoulder, her eyes found mine.
They were completely dry.
He tied the rope around her waist.
The ledge groaned.
Rock crumbled under my heel and I slipped, and I caught the edge with both hands and hung over the falls with my belly scraping stone.
"Cormac!" I screamed. "Hate me forever if you want. But this is your son. He hasn't even seen the sun. Please."
He crouched and looked at me with no expression at all.
"If you cared about a baby," he said quietly, "you wouldn't have staged this to get my attention."
He took my right hand in his and bent my index finger backward.
It cracked.
I screamed.
He did the middle finger next, and then the ring finger, and then the smallest.
My grip failed, and I fell.
The river hit me.
It was black, freezing and loud, and it threw me against a rock so hard that my ribs broke.
I tasted blood.
I wrapped both arms around my belly and screamed underwater, and nothing came out but bubbles.
Hold on, baby.
Please hold on.
The current tossed me up for one breath, and I saw him on the bank.
He stood on dry ground with Felicity held against his chest.
He was wrapping his jacket around her shoulders.
He was not looking at the water.
He never looked for me, not once.
I reached down the bond with the last strength I had, the bond I had fed for eight years while he starved it.
Cormac. I can't swim. I never could. Please.
I felt him receive it.
Then he slammed the bond shut, and something inside my chest went dark.
I stopped fighting.
I let the water fill my mouth, closed my eyes and held my baby.
A hand clamped around my wrist.
I was dragged up out of the black and into air so cold it burned.
A huge body pulled me against a chest that gave off heat.
Golden eyes blazed above me, eyes no ordinary wolf has.
"Don't you dare die on me, little wolf," a deep voice growled. "Not in my river."
He hauled me onto a gravel bar and rolled me on my side, and I coughed up half the river.
My ribs screamed, and my right hand hung off my arm.
Under my palm, my son kicked.
I started to cry.
"He's alive," I whispered. "He's alive."
"So are you." The stranger crouched beside me, water running off his beard. "I'm Bram MacNaughton. This is Kettle River land. Whose are you?"
"Nobody's."
Upstream, through the trees, a voice carried over the water.
I knew that voice better than my own.
"Call it off," Cormac said. "She's gone. Take Felicity home."
Bram turned his head and listened.
"Do I carry you up there and put you at his feet?" he asked.
I looked at my broken hand.
"No," I said. "Let him think I drowned. Let him bury me."
Far behind us, the Ironwood horn blew the long note for the dead.
Barely ten minutes had passed.
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