Never Reject a Wolf Princess novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Contract
On Midsummer Eve Elowen tears the treaty contract before both courts, gives up her crown for her mate, and Brogan answers by rejecting her.
I tore the treaty in half in front of two kingdoms.
The parchment made a loud, dry sound in the Moon Hall.
Three hundred wolves stopped breathing at once.
It was Midsummer Eve, and the round hall smelled of beeswax and warm bodies and fear.
My father sat in the carved chair on the dais with his hand at his chest.
My uncle Osric stood beside him in his heavy rings, and his mouth had gone slack.
Across the table sat Prince Alaric of Highcrest, in grey silk, with the pen still in his fingers.
He was meant to be my husband before the moon rose.
Thirty years of war between our kingdoms were meant to end with my name under his.
I laid both halves of the contract on the table in front of him.
"I won't sign," I said.
My voice carried to the back of the hall, because the stone floor was built to carry it.
"The law says an heir who refuses a sworn treaty loses the succession," Osric said quickly.
"I know the law," I said.
"Elowen, think what you are doing." His voice was soft, the way it always was when he wanted a room to hear it.
"I have thought for a month."
I took the circlet off my head.
It was thin silver, and it had sat on my brow since I was twelve.
I set it on the table next to the torn pages.
"I'm Elowen Ashgrove, daughter of the king, and I give up my claim to the crown."
A sound went through the hall.
Prince Alaric put down his pen.
He did not look angry, which made it worse.
He looked like a man who had traveled four days to be told the weather had changed.
"May I ask why, Princess?" he said.
"Because I have a mate," I said.
Every head turned.
Wolves wait their whole lives for that word, and a princess is not allowed to use it in the middle of a treaty.
I held up my left wrist.
On the inside, pale as new frost, sat the silver crescent that had risen in the spring.
It had come up the day he touched me at the hunt, and it had not faded once.
"I won't marry a stranger to end a war when the moon has already chosen for me," I said.
"Who?" my father whispered from the dais.
His voice was thin.
I had not seen him look so grey in all my life.
I turned and looked across the hall to where the royal guard stood in two crimson lines.
Brogan Strachan stood at the end of the near line with his cloak pinned and his chin high.
He was twenty-seven, the youngest captain in a hundred years, with cropped sandy hair and green eyes that crinkled when he laughed.
For one month he had met me in the stable loft after midnight and called me his wolf.
"Brogan," I said.
I smiled, and I let my chipped tooth show, which I never did in front of the court.
"His name is Brogan Strachan."
The guards on either side of him stepped back to give him room.
He walked down the aisle with his shoulders loose and his eyes on me.
I watched him come and my heart beat in my wrists, over the mark.
He was going to take my hand, and the whole hall would see his own crescent answer mine.
He stopped an arm's length away.
He did not take my hand.
"Your Highness," he said.
It was the voice he used for visiting lords.
"Brogan?"
"I have the greatest respect for you."
He glanced at my uncle, only for a moment.
Osric inclined his head, very slightly.
My stomach turned over.
"What are you doing?" I said, so quietly only he could hear.
Brogan lifted his own left sleeve and showed the whole court the crescent on his wrist.
It was the twin of mine.
"I won't pretend this isn't mine," he said, loud and clear. "The moon wrote it, and I can't scratch it out."
My breath came back.
Then he said, "But I will not be mated to a woman who breaks her word to two kingdoms."
Somebody gasped on the left side of the hall.
"Brogan," I said.
"Before witnesses and before the moon," he said, and his green eyes never left mine, "I refuse you as my mate, Elowen Ashgrove."
It felt like a hand reaching into my chest and tearing something out by the root.
My wolf screamed inside me, a sound no one else could hear.
The silver mark on my wrist went black.
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