My Fated Alpha Used Me as Revenge Obeyed 100 Rules and Still Got Rejected in Front of His Pack? novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Moonflowers
Lottie rejects Jasper's Luna offer in front of the pack, he presses the bouquet into Autumn's arms, and she takes his hundred rules to save her friend; his first rule is that she is not his mate.
Jasper Radcliffe, the Alpha-to-be, went down on one knee in front of three hundred wolves and held out a bouquet of moonflowers to my best friend.
She did not take it.
It was the midsummer gathering, and our whole pack stood in the high meadow under a full moon.
I was at the back with the other omegas, carrying a tray of cups from the healers' table, where I always stood.
"Lottie," Jasper said, and his voice reached the tree line. "Be my Luna."
Nobody in the meadow moved.
Lottie and I had shared a den for three years, and I knew every face she made.
This was the one she made before she kicked a door in.
"No," she said.
"Say it properly," Jasper said.
"Properly, then. I'm not something you ask for in front of three hundred people so I can't refuse."
His father, the Alpha, stepped out of the crowd with his hands folded.
He had silver hair and a soft voice, and he looked truly sorry.
"Miss Greer, I wish I could let it pass. An insult to the heir in the Moon's light has a price, and I would rather you heard it from me. Come to my office in the morning. It's your rank, your den, and a week in the cold cells."
Lottie's chin came up, but her hands were shaking.
Jasper stood.
The flowers shook in his fist, and his jaw was so tight I could see it from forty feet away.
Then he turned and walked straight through the crowd toward the omegas' table.
Toward me.
I put the tray down because I did not trust my hands.
He stopped in front of me and pushed the bouquet into my arms.
The stems were wet and cold.
Where his fingers closed over mine, both my palms burned.
My wolf almost never spoke, and she stood up inside me and said: Mate.
Jasper's hands went still.
He looked at our hands, then at my face, and I knew he had felt it too.
He took his hands back.
"Don't," he said, so low that only I could hear. "It's the moon. Everyone feels strange tonight."
"Autumn, don't," Lottie called from across the meadow.
A woman's hand closed gently on my elbow.
It was Cordelia Sunderland, the Beta's daughter, with her blond hair in its neat knot.
"Breathe," she said. "Whatever he's playing at, I'll keep an eye on you. Come and find me tomorrow."
She already had a wool coat over her arm, and she put it around my shoulders.
It fit.
Jasper took my other arm and walked me three steps away from her, to the edge of the lantern light.
"Here is what this is," he said. "Lottie wanted to make a fool of me. For one season, you are my choice. You walk where I say and you do what I say. When I'm finished, you go back to your garden."
"And Lottie?"
"What about her?"
"Your father is going to take her rank and put her in the cells."
"That is between her and my father."
"Then it's between you and me," I said. "Lottie goes unpunished, tonight, in front of everyone, or I drop these flowers in the creek."
His eyes narrowed.
"An omega, making terms."
"I'm holding your flowers."
A muscle jumped in his cheek.
I thought of Lottie's shaking hands, and of our den with her not in it.
So I said it plainly. "I'll do whatever you want for a season. But she goes free."
He looked over my head at the crowd, who were all looking at us.
"Fine," he said.
He turned and raised his voice.
"Father. Lottie Greer's insult is withdrawn. My Luna-in-waiting asks it as her first favor."
A rustle ran through the meadow.
Roland looked at his son for a long moment, and then he smiled.
"As you wish."
Jasper took a folded page from inside his coat and held it up so the pack could see.
The paper was old and brown at the folds, and the numbers down its edge ran to one hundred, in handwriting that was not his.
"Ironwood, hear me," Jasper said. "Autumn Ostley will carry my hundred rules. If she keeps every one, she is my Luna. I swear it under this moon."
Every moonflower in my arms opened at once.
The white petals unfolded all down the stems, and the whole meadow smelled sweet.
An old woman in the front row, the Keeper of the pack's Moon Book, touched two fingers to her brow.
Jasper pressed the page into my hand.
"Nobody has ever kept ten," he said quietly.
I folded my fingers over it and looked him in the eye.
"Then you've never asked an omega."
He leaned down, and for the crowd it looked like a kiss on my cheek, but his mouth stopped at my ear.
"Rule one," he said. "You are not my mate."
My wolf howled the opposite.
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