My Mate Gambled Me Away to the Lycan King novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Forty-Two Notifications
Marlo lands in Denver to a pinned banner, her ugliest photo and a poker IOU with her name on it, decides to walk into the pack hall with her face up, and finds the Lycan King there to collect.
The pack chat pinned a red banner at the top of the screen while I was still standing at baggage claim.
CONGRATS TO THE LYCAN KING ON HIS NEW PRIZE!
My phone had been off for the whole flight home.
When I switched it back on, it buzzed in my hand until I thought it would crack.
There were forty-two notifications.
Every wolf in our territory is on that chat.
That includes the kitchen staff and the pups who borrow their mothers' phones.
Under the banner was a photo of a torn sheet of paper, the kind they hand out at the pack's poker game.
It was an IOU, scrawled in blue pen.
The stake line said: Marlo Haskett.
The signature at the bottom said: Dane Brickell, Acting Alpha.
I read it twice, and then I looked at my own name for a long time.
Dane was my mate.
For three years he had kept our bond a secret, and every time I asked, he told me the same thing.
"When the time is right, Marlo. I want to claim you in front of everyone, and I want it done properly."
I had spent this whole last year at the Northern Healers' learning to close wounds.
I had stayed because he asked me to wait.
Below the IOU, somebody had posted a second picture.
It was me, asleep on a bus seat, with my mouth open and my hair stuck to my cheek.
I had taken that photo myself, as a joke, and sent it to one person.
The caption read: She's all yours, your Majesty. Hope you like them drooling.
Eight hundred and nine wolves had reacted with a laughing face.
Winnie's name was in there too, three times, in capital letters, telling everyone to delete it.
Then the thread scrolled again.
Dane, to the whole pack: Be kind to Marlo, she's had a long year.
Thirty grand says she's too shy to come to the lodge. Who's in?
Four wolves had put their names under it.
Winnie had written: I'm in. She'll be there by lunch. Put me down for the whole thirty.
My throat hurt, but I did not cry.
There was a line of strangers with suitcases behind me.
I would not be seen doing that here.
A text came in from Tabitha Greer.
Tabitha worked the pack kitchen and had been the first person to hug me when I left.
Hey hon!! Please don't read the chat, it's all a misunderstanding and Dane is handling it. Come straight to my place, I've got the couch made up. XO
It was kind of her.
It was also strange, because I had not told anyone which flight I was on.
I put the thought away, because Dane was calling.
I answered on the first ring.
"Marlo, baby, listen." His voice was low and warm, the way it had always been when he was fixing something. "It's a joke. A bad one, I know. The King will never collect on a stake like that, he's got a hundred better things to do."
"You wrote my name on it."
"I was drunk and the table was loud. I'll take care of it. Just go to Tabitha's and let the chat die down."
"Did you post the picture?"
"What picture?"
He said it too fast.
I looked down at the mark on the left side of my neck, where he had pressed his teeth three years ago, and I waited, the way I had waited every time, for it to turn warm.
It never had.
The other wolves in the pack talked about their bonds like a fire under the skin.
Dane called ours a quiet bond, and I had believed him, because he was the one who knew about these things.
The mark smelled faintly like a hospital hallway.
It always did.
"Marlo? Are you there?"
"I'm here," I said. "I'll call you back."
I hung up on him.
I rented a car at the counter, and in the car I opened my makeup bag and put on red lipstick.
Then I drove forty minutes west to the Silver Creek lodge with my chin up, because Winnie had put her money on me.
The hall was full.
There were two hundred wolves in it, on a Tuesday, eating lunch off paper plates and watching their phones.
They all looked up when I came through the door.
Dane was at the front table, in the chair beside the empty one.
His father Orrin used to fill it, before the blight took him to his bed.
His smile lasted until he saw my lipstick, and then it dropped off his face.
Then a chair scraped at the very back of the hall, and every wolf in the room turned.
A tall man in a black suit stood up from the shadows.
I knew the scar through his left eyebrow from every news clip I had ever seen.
Caius Hargrove, the Lycan King, looked straight at me and spoke in a voice that carried to every wall.
"Miss Haskett," he said. "I came to collect."
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