My Fated Mate Was a Lie, Now the Alpha King Wants the Truth novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Seal I Mended
Peregrine rejects Idony before the court and names Verity his fated mate; Idony spots her own filed notch in the witness seal, exposes the counterfeit, and the King's hand closes on her wrist.
I spent seven years pressing other people's happy endings into wax.
On Naming Day, in the Moon Hall, I stood in a white gown with my own name read out loud.
Four hundred nobles filled the benches.
King Cassian Aldmoor sat on the low throne at the side of the dais, as the Crown does for every Naming.
He looked grey and sick and bored.
Peregrine Daunt, my fiance for three years, took my hand.
"Lord Daunt," the High Registrar said, "do you name this woman as the one the Moon chose?"
"No," said Peregrine.
He let go of my hand.
The hall didn't gasp.
Rich people don't gasp.
They leaned in.
"I release you, Idony Wrexham," he said, loud enough for the back rows. "The Moon was never in it. It was paperwork."
I laughed.
I couldn't help it.
It was the first true thing he had said to me in three years.
Then a woman in blue silk walked up the aisle with a scroll in both hands.
Verity Slattery, twenty-seven, daughter of a count, pale as the candles.
She didn't look at me.
"My fated mate," Peregrine said, and put his arm around her waist. "The Registry has confirmed it."
The High Registrar, Ambrose Tull, smiled at her.
"The ledger lamp will show the proof," he said.
A clerk carried the certificate to the crystal lamp and held it up so the whole hall could see the seal glow.
I know that seal.
I have held that seal in my hands.
It was the witness mark of a registrar who had been dead for thirty years.
Her die lives in a drawer in the archive.
I had mended it myself.
The die had split down the middle four years ago, and I filed the crack smooth with a needle file.
I left a nick on the lower rim, no bigger than a grain of rice.
I only did that so I would know my own work.
On the lamp-lit certificate, at the lower rim of the seal, there was my nick.
My throat went tight.
My fiance was being handed a destiny, and it had my fingerprints on it.
"May I look at that?" I said.
"You may not," said Tull, still gentle.
"The seal is forged."
Now they gasped.
I walked off the dais, took the certificate out of the clerk's hands and held it to the lamp.
"This witness died thirty years ago," I said. "Her die split four years ago. I filed it back together. Look at the lower rim."
The front benches went very still.
"There's a nick," I said. "I made it. A thirty-year-old impression can't have it."
"She's overwrought," Tull said. "She has just been released from a bond."
"I'm a seal restorer," I said. "I'm never overwrought about a seal."
Somebody in the back actually laughed.
Peregrine's face went flat and ugly.
"Take her out," he said.
"It's a fake," I said, louder. "Her fated bond is a fake. Ask where the die was last month. Ask who has the key."
Verity's mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Two guards had my arms.
Tull nodded to them.
He was still smiling.
"Escort Miss Wrexham out," he said. "She is no longer an employee of the Registry."
I felt it then, the whole hall, all those eyes, turning.
I was twenty-six.
I had nobody.
And I was right.
A chair scraped on the dais.
The King had stood up.
He crossed the floor, the guards stepped back from him, and he took hold of my left wrist.
The skin on my inner wrist, where the Registry had pressed a crescent three years ago, was bare under his fingers.
He swayed.
I thought he was going to fall.
His face changed.
The grey went out of it.
His breath came out of him in one long shaking exhale.
"Sire?" said Tull.
The King didn't look at him.
"Keep your hand on me, Miss Wrexham," he said quietly, his dark eyes locked on mine. "Do not let go."
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