My Mate Gave My Wolf to His Mistress novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Silver Altar
Chained before the council so her mate can give her wolf to his mistress, Hesper speaks her real name. It breaks his claim and names her an outlaw. Corwin lifts the first hook.
My mate chained me to the silver altar in front of the whole council, and I held out my wrists for him.
The rite chamber under the chapel was cold enough to show my breath.
Twelve elders sat in two rows on the stone benches, wrapped in their grey cloaks.
Silver hooks lay in a line on a white cloth beside the altar.
Next to my slab stood a second one, empty, with a folded blanket at its head.
Every autumn my mate spent one night alone in this chapel, and in seven years I had never asked him why.
That morning he had kissed my forehead in our bedroom.
He warmed my cold hands between his own and tucked a shawl around my shoulders.
"It's only a blessing for the Luna's wolf, Lena. You'll sleep through all of it. Nothing will hurt."
I had wanted to believe him, so I put on the grey dress he picked.
I walked down the chapel stairs beside him.
The chains were cold on my skin.
The silver burned a ring around each wrist at once.
Old Maud, the chapel keeper, was smoothing the linen.
She did not look at my face.
She passed her thumb over each ring bolt under the altar, one after another, and then she looked at me.
Then she stepped back against the wall with her hands folded.
The eldest of the council stood.
"Alpha Torin Harrow of Ravenhold asks the rite of Severing for his mate, under mate-right."
"Do you stand by it, Alpha?"
"I do." Torin did not look at me.
"Lena Harrow, you may speak against it."
"I do," I said. "I speak against it."
"Mate-right overrides a mate's refusal." The eldest sat down. "The rite proceeds."
I turned my head to Torin.
"Whose wolf am I giving?"
He had the grace to pause.
"Elspeth's. She has no wolf of her own, Lena, and she has been wasting for years."
"The council will not accept a Luna who cannot shift. You have never needed yours."
Elspeth. The pale woman with the soft voice.
She had been asleep in my bed for two months because the house was warmer than the guest wing.
I had carried her broth on trays.
"I've never needed her?" I said.
"You never run her. You never ask to." He said it gently.
"A Luna's wolf stays home. I told you that the first year, and you agreed."
"You won't miss what you never used."
In seven years he had never let me run with the pack.
I had told myself it was his way of protecting me.
Behind the benches, a broad man in a travelling coat shifted his weight.
Bram Askew, Alpha of Stonefell and Warden of the border, sat at the council's invitation as a neutral witness.
I had seen him twice in seven years, both times across a hall.
He was looking at me now.
I could have begged, and some of the elders were waiting for it.
I could have told them every sweet thing Torin said at night.
Instead I said the name I had kept in my mouth for seven years.
"My name is not Lena. It is Hesper Aldane."
The chamber went silent.
Maud's hands came apart at her waist.
Torin said, "What did you say?"
"Hesper, daughter of the Aldane Alpha and his mate, of the river pack at Greywater Weir."
My voice shook once and then it held.
"I never took your name, Torin. You gave me one on the first night, and I let you."
Bram Askew was on his feet. "Say it again."
I said it again.
The eldest leaned forward. "Maud. Test the bond by the true name."
Maud came to me and laid two fingers on the mate-mark at my shoulder.
It was a crescent, and Torin kissed it every night.
It had burned warm for seven years.
Under her fingers it went cold as slate.
An elder swore under his breath.
Another stood up and sat down again.
"It's dead," Maud said. "There was never a bond in it. Not with this woman's name."
"Then mate-right is void," the eldest said. "The rite cannot proceed."
Torin said nothing for a long moment.
Then he looked past me, at the twelve grey cloaks.
"She says Aldane."
"She does," said the eldest. "An outlaw name."
He turned to the benches.
"This council hanged the Aldane line for the poisonings at Greywater seven years ago."
"The sentence stands on any of them found living."
I had known that when I spoke.
It had cost me, and I paid it anyway.
"Then she is not my mate, and she is not under council protection," Torin said.
He used the warm voice he used at night.
"An outlaw's wolf, given to a house that needs one, is within the council's own law."
Nobody answered him.
Bram Askew stepped over the bench. "Torin."
"Sit, Warden. You came as a witness."
Torin raised his hand to Corwin, his beta, who stood by the stairs with four Ravenhold guards behind him.
"Bring me the first hook."
Corwin lifted it from the linen.
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