Rejected By My Alpha: My White Wolf Ignited novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Kneel
Alaric's Alpha command fails on her, Linnet names her terms before three hundred wolves and leaves as Rhys's guest, and at the ford Alaric begs her never to let Rhys mark her.
Nobody in the hall breathed.
Rhys Kinloch stood at the back with three hundred wolves between us, and he didn't come any closer.
He just looked at me.
My wolf looked back.
She liked him.
I felt it between my shoulder blades.
I didn't have time to think about that.
The moonstone was lying on the altar step where it had fallen out of my fist when I changed.
It was still glowing.
I bent my head and picked it up in my teeth, chain and all.
It sat on my tongue like a warm coin.
"Linnet."
Alaric had found his voice.
He stepped down from the altar with the scroll still crushed in one hand.
His eyes had gone Alpha gold, and his voice dropped into the tone that made grown wolves fold.
"Kneel."
I felt the command roll across the hall.
Two rows of the stands went down on their knees before he'd even finished the word.
His betas dropped.
An enforcer by the aisle dropped so hard I heard his kneecap hit stone.
It went over me.
I stood there on four white legs with the stone in my mouth and fire running down my back.
Alaric's face changed.
"Kneel," he said again, louder.
Nothing.
Someone in the stands said, "She can't hear it."
"She hears it fine," said the old voice of Alaric's father, from the front row. "It just doesn't reach her."
Rosamund was on her feet.
"Enforcers," she said. "Take her. She's a thief, and she's dangerous."
Four of them came off the wall.
I didn't move.
I just let the fire come up.
It ran out from my paws across the floor in a pale ring, and the first enforcer stepped into it and stopped dead.
He looked down at his boots.
They weren't burning.
He was.
Only a little, only on the hand he'd been reaching out to grab me with, and he yanked it back against his chest and swore.
The other three stayed where they were.
I wanted my hands back.
I thought it, and she gave them to me.
It came on me the way it had gone, all at once, bones pulling short, and I was on my knees on the altar step in the shreds of my mother's dress.
The stone was in my fist.
Somebody's shirt landed over my shoulders.
It was soft flannel and warm from a body, and it smelled like pine pitch and wood smoke.
Rhys Kinloch had walked the whole length of the hall while I changed.
He stood one step down from me, in his undershirt, with his hands loose at his sides.
He didn't touch me.
He didn't speak for me either.
He just stood there, and I understood that if anybody else came at me, they'd come through him.
I pushed my arms into the sleeves and buttoned the shirt to my throat and stood up.
It came down to my thighs.
I looked at the stands.
"I'm leaving Stalbridge tonight," I said. "This stone was my grandmother's and my mother's, and now it's mine. Nobody here gave it to anybody."
Cressida made a noise.
There was an angry red ring around her throat where the chain had been.
"You're not taking anything," Rosamund said. "You came into this pack with nothing, and the cottage you've been living in belongs to Stalbridge. I had it locked an hour ago."
"My mother's cottage."
"The Luna's cottage. Everything on this land is mine to lock."
She smiled at me.
It was the smile she'd worn at her tea three months ago, pouring my cup.
"Then I'll be back for it," I said.
Laughter went through the stands again, but thinner.
Nobody wanted to laugh too loud now.
"And where do you imagine you'll go?" Rosamund said. "Nobody takes a thief."
Rhys spoke for the first time since he'd said that.
"Kinloch offers her guest-right."
His voice was low and rough and carried to the rafters.
Rosamund's lips went thin.
"You're a witness here, Kinloch. Not a party."
"I'm a party now."
I turned to look at him.
Up close he was even bigger, and his eyes were a dark green-brown that had gone gold at the rims.
"Guest," I said. "Not mate."
"Guest," he said.
"I mean it."
"I know you do."
A corner of his mouth moved under the beard.
It wasn't quite a smile.
It made my wolf turn a slow circle inside me.
I walked down the aisle between the stands with my mother's stone in my fist and my bare feet on the cold stone.
Nobody stopped me.
Rhys walked half a step behind me, and two Kinloch wolves fell in behind him from the guest bench.
Outside the snow had started.
We walked down through the pines to the river in the dark.
The Ford River was low and black and loud over the stones, and the far bank was Kinloch land.
I had never once crossed it.
I was knee-deep in the shallows, the cold so sharp it made me gasp, when I heard running behind me.
"Linnet!"
Alaric came out of the trees alone, without his coat, breathing hard.
He splashed in after me and caught my wrist.
My fire came up on its own.
It went over his palm white and fast, and he hissed through his teeth.
He didn't let go.
Out in the middle of the river, Rhys had turned around and gone very still.
"Let go of me," I said.
Alaric's hand was shaking.
His face in the snow-light looked nothing like the man at the altar.
He looked scared.
"Don't let him mark you," he said. "Linnet, listen to me. Whatever you do, don't let him mark you."
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