My Sister Faked Blindness, So I Destroyed Them All novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Bride's Line
At dawn Keeva writes a no-blow clause into her own mating contract in front of the whole pack, and Dahlia's wedding gift burns her hand.
The whole Northvale Pack was waiting in the hall at dawn.
I walked in on my own feet, and nobody had to drag me.
Mom stood in the front row with her arms around Dahlia and did not look up.
Tobias leaned against a pillar, grinning.
My father sat on the Alpha's chair with the contract on his knee.
At the foot of the dais stood the man who had killed me.
Bram Tolland was taller than I remembered.
His gray work coat was clean and badly mended at the elbow.
His knuckles were scarred, and his hands hung open at his sides.
He looked at me once, and then at the floor.
My wolf stood up inside me and pushed at my ribs.
Mine, she said.
I told her to sit down.
She did not.
The pack secretary read the contract in a flat voice.
The bride would be housed at the lower farms and answer to her mate in all things.
The bride would have no claim on the Alpha's house, name or money.
The laughter from the back rows was thin and mean.
"One more thing," I said.
The secretary stopped.
"Every bride may write one line into her own contract before the blood signing," I said. "It's pack custom."
My father's mouth tightened.
"It's also pack law," called an old voice from the lower-farm side of the hall.
Heads turned.
The head gardener stood with his cap in both hands.
He had taught me to graft roses when I was nine.
My father could not refuse a custom in front of the whole pack.
"Write it," he said.
The secretary handed me the pen.
I wrote: *If either party raises a hand against the other, the contract ends, and the Alpha of Northvale forfeits the lower farms' harvest tithe for ten years.*
I turned the page so the front rows could read it.
Somebody gasped.
The lower-farm side of the hall went quiet and then very still.
The tithe fed half the Alpha's table.
"This is an insult," Tobias said, pushing off the pillar.
"It's a clause about hitting," I said. "Why would it insult anyone?"
Nobody answered him.
My father looked at the page for a long time.
He knew what everyone in that hall was now thinking.
A clause like that is only written by a woman who expects to be hit.
"Sign it," I said to him quietly, "or explain to your pack why you won't."
His signature was so hard it tore the paper.
Then he held the knife out to Bram.
Bram took it and cut his own palm without a flinch.
He held his bleeding hand out to me, palm up, and did not close it.
"You can still say no," he said.
His voice was low and rough.
It was the first time I had ever heard him speak without screaming at me.
I stared at him.
"Why would I say no?" I said.
"I'm told I'm a bad bargain."
"So I've heard."
I cut my own palm and put it into his.
His fingers closed around mine, slowly and carefully.
The bond lit under my skin.
It was hot and sudden, and it ran up my arm into my chest.
My wolf howled once, silently, inside my head.
I pulled my hand back too fast.
Bram looked at his own empty palm, and something crossed his face I could not read.
"It's done," my father said. "She's yours. Get her out of my hall."
The pack stood.
A few of the lower-farm women nodded at me as I passed.
Nobody from the front rows would meet my eyes.
Then Dahlia's cane tapped across the stone floor.
"Wait," she said. "Please. I have a gift."
Mom led her forward with one hand under her elbow.
Dahlia was wearing pale blue and her dark glasses, and she was smiling warmly toward the sound of my voice.
"It's the Thorburn wedding tradition," she said. "Mom told me about it. I braided it myself, Keeva."
She held out a belt.
It was brown leather, tightly braided, with a tarnished brass buckle.
I knew that buckle.
I had looked at it from the floor of a cabin every night for a year.
"Take it," Dahlia said. "Please. I want you to have something good from me."
Every eye in the hall was on us.
If I refused it, I was the sister who snubbed a blind girl's gift.
I put my bleeding palm around the leather.
It burned.
The smell came up from the braid, bitter and green and wrong, and my wolf screamed.
Wolfsbane, soaked into every strand.
I kept my face still and my fingers closed.
"Do you like it?" Dahlia asked.
"It's beautiful," I said.
Behind her dark glasses, her face stayed warm and open and kind.
Bram stepped up at my shoulder.
He did not look at Dahlia.
He lifted the belt out of my hand, brought it close to his face, and went absolutely still.
"That's wolfsbane," he said, in a voice only I could hear. "Who handed you that?"
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