Reborn to Get the Alpha She Rejected novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Terms

On Cinder Ridge Calla hears Wynn's warm thoughts and Ronan's three terms, and finds a closet of new clothes already in her size.

I left the Merrow lodge at nine the next morning with two suitcases and a box of my third graders' drawings.

Nobody came to the door to see me off except the cook, who pressed a foil-wrapped loaf into my hands and thought, Poor lamb, poor lamb.

Lyra was at Dorian's side on the porch, waving.

His arm was around her waist.

I listened as the truck rolled out of the drive, because I couldn't help it.

Tonight. Her first cup tonight. She'll think it's love.

I looked straight ahead at the road.

I could not stop it yet. I had no proof, and a sister who thought I was lying to ruin her.

But I had one thing I'd never had in the first life. I knew exactly when he would do what.

The truck was Ronan Kestrel's, an old green Ford that smelled of cedar and coffee.

His sister Wynn rode in the back seat with her boots on the cooler.

Wynn's thoughts came into my head easily, with no edge on them.

She seems okay. She's pale. Don't let her see you staring, Wynn. Oh, she saw.

I turned around.

"I did see," I said.

Wynn grinned, sunburned and caught. "Sorry. I'm a stare-er. Ronan says it's my worst quality."

"It is," said Ronan, eyes on the road.

It was the first thing he'd said to me all morning.

I waited for the thought that went with it.

There was nothing.

Beside me sat a big man with both hands on the wheel.

The place where his mind should have been was perfectly quiet.

It should have bothered me less than it did.

The Salt Road climbed out of the bay through wet pines.

Forty minutes of gray road, one lane each way, the Kestrel land on the right once we crossed the ridge.

Wynn talked the whole way, about the pack and the cook's feud with the plumber.

She said the east room had a view of the whole valley.

I let her. Her thoughts matched what she said, and it was restful to hear someone whose mouth and mind agreed.

Cinder Ridge turned out to be a town of maybe six hundred.

At the top of Main Street stood a stone and cedar lodge with a wide porch full of wolves.

They went quiet as we pulled in.

The thoughts hit me all at once.

That's the Merrow girl. Ronan's bride. Why her.

She looks small. She looks scared. She looks like she'd run.

Most of them were curious.

A few were cold.

One old man at the porch rail thought nothing but, A Merrow, in our house.

I looked him in the face until he looked away first.

"Don't mind him," Wynn said. "He thinks the Merrows stole a fishing dock in 1962."

"Did they?"

"Probably."

Ronan came around the truck and took my suitcases out of the bed without asking, one in each hand.

Inside, the lodge smelled of woodsmoke and wet dog.

He walked me up the stairs to the east room and set the cases by the door.

Then he stopped, with his hands at his sides.

Up close he was bigger than I remembered.

His eyes were amber-brown, and they stayed on me.

"I'll say three things once," he said. "Then you can tell me what's wrong with them."

"Go on."

"You have your own room. I won't come into it unless you say so."

"All right."

"There's no claiming bite. Not now, not at the Rite, not unless you ask for it."

I had known that was coming. In the first life I would have said it myself.

"And a year," he said. "If you want to leave after a year, you can."

"The treaty stands either way. I'll see to it."

That was all of it.

He waited, hands open, for me to argue.

I had a hundred questions and no reason to ask any of them.

"Those are fair terms," I said.

Something moved in his face and was gone.

"Good," said Ronan. "Wynn will bring you dinner. Lock the door if you like."

He nodded to me once and went down the hall, quick and quiet for a man his size.

Wynn leaned in the doorway with her arms crossed, looking after him.

Her thought came through plainly.

He asked for the Merrow daughters a month before anyone wrote that treaty. Nobody's supposed to know that.

I turned around slowly. "What did you say?"

"Hm?" Wynn blinked. "I said dinner's at six."

I went to the closet to put something between me and her face.

The door stuck, and I yanked it open.

It was full of clothes.

Sweaters and boots and a long green coat.

Jeans in my size, cotton dresses in my size, a pair of wool socks with the tag still on.

Every single piece was new.

Every tag was dated from three weeks ago.

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