Reborn to Get the Alpha She Rejected novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Engagement Dinner
At her engagement dinner Calla hears her sister Lyra's thoughts and learns Lyra is reborn too and is taking Calla's fiancé; Calla agrees to the treaty marriage to the Kestrel Alpha instead. Lyra's last thought: He'll kill her by spring.
I sat at my own engagement dinner with two hundred wolves watching me wear a ring I had already died wearing.
I had woken that morning in my old bed, five years in the past.
I had also woken up hearing everyone's thoughts.
My sister Lyra had braided my hair before the dinner, humming, her fingers quick and gentle.
"You look perfect," she said. "I only want you happy, Calla."
Her mouth said that.
Her mind said something else.
Mine now. Thank you for the second chance.
I held very still while she pinned the last curl.
Lyra had died too. I could tell from her thoughts, which were full of a cold little house, a husband who smelled of fish, and a lodge she had only ever seen from the outside.
She was wrong about what she had seen from the outside.
Now the long table in the Merrow lodge stretched under the antler chandelier, and every mind in the room crowded into mine at once.
The hungry ones. The bored ones. A cook worried about the lamb.
Dorian sat on my left in his good dark coat.
He had refilled my water glass twice without being asked.
Now he laid his hand over mine and squeezed, as if I might need steadying.
His thumb moved on my knuckles.
His mind was not kind at all.
Tea tonight. Tea every night. The old man first, then the seat is mine.
I kept my face pleasant and my fork steady.
That was how he had killed me. A cup of tea, brought to my bed every night for five years, by a husband everyone said was so devoted.
Across the table sat the Kestrel delegation, in from Cinder Ridge to sign the Salt Road treaty.
At the center of them sat their Alpha, Ronan Kestrel.
He was big and still, with a scar through one eyebrow and a flannel shirt under a jacket that had seen weather.
I could hear the lamb-worried cook, the bored uncles, the girl by the window wishing she were home.
I could not hear him at all.
Where his mind should have been there was only quiet, flat and calm.
He looked up and found me looking.
He did not look away.
I did.
My father stood and tapped his glass. He was fifty-eight and gray, and he coughed into his fist before he spoke.
"The treaty needs a marriage," he said. "Kestrel and Merrow, sealed by blood. I meant Lyra for the Alpha, and Calla for Dorian, as you all know."
Lyra rose beside me, one hand pressed to her heart.
"Father, may I say something?"
The hall went quiet.
"I'm so happy for Calla," she said, and her voice shook just right. "But I've watched Dorian these two years, and I think he and I..." She stopped and wiped her eye. "Calla's the oldest. She should have the honor of the treaty. The Alpha's wife is a great place in the world. Let me take Dorian, and let her be Luna."
A murmur ran down the table.
Dorian's thumb stopped moving.
Either sister. The seat comes with either. Take the soft one, she'll believe anything.
"If your father permits it," Dorian said, and smiled at Lyra.
Lyra's mind sang.
She's supposed to throw him away at the Rite. Let the beast have her. I'm only helping history.
Everyone was looking at me. My father, tired and hopeful. Dorian, patient. My sister, with her eyes full of tears and her thoughts full of a grave.
I could have screamed the truth across the table.
Nobody would have believed it, and it would have warned Dorian.
So I took my hand out from under his, slowly, and put it in my lap.
"You can have him," I said.
Lyra's face lit up before she could stop it.
"And the treaty?" my father asked.
I looked across the table at the one man in the hall I couldn't read.
Ronan Kestrel had not moved. He was watching only me.
"I'll go," I said.
A chair scraped. Somebody laughed in shock.
Ronan stood.
"The Kestrel Pack accepts," he said, in a low, even voice. He took the treaty pen from his sister, Wynn, and signed.
Lyra hugged me, warm and quick, her curls against my cheek.
"You'll be so happy," she whispered.
Her mind went on without her, pleased and sure.
He'll kill her by spring.
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