Rejected for Being Barren, Now the Alphas Kneel novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Horn

Lucan Farquharson rides in, knows the pups on sight, and faces Theron down; Stormbrook serves her a summons to stand trial for bearing bastards, and Bram asks if that is him.

Eight wolves came down the ridge, and the biggest one did not stop until he was ten feet from my children.

He shifted as he walked.

By the time he reached the treeline he was a man in a dark wool coat, tall and broad, with a scar through his left eyebrow.

I had last seen that scar from six inches away, in lantern light, ten years ago.

I had bitten his throat on our first night.

The mark was still there, pale and healed, just above his collar.

"Wren," Lucan said.

It was the name I had given him in the mountains, when I was running and had no other.

My knees nearly went.

My wolf, who had been silent about him for ten years, threw herself at the inside of my ribs.

"Bram," I said. "Let them up."

"I don't know how I did it," Bram whispered.

"Say enough. Say it like you mean it."

"Enough," Bram said, in his own small voice.

The pale gold went out of all six pairs of eyes.

Theron and Perrin got to their feet with mud to their knees and murder in their faces.

Corinna stood a moment later, wiping her hands on her cardigan.

Lucan did not look at any of them.

He was looking at the children.

He looked at Bram first, then at the twin girls, then at the quiet boy who had gone behind my leg.

He looked at the smallest, who had mud up to her chin and had not let go of her frog.

His nostrils flared, and all the color left his face.

"Six," he said.

"Alpha Farquharson," Theron said, in the voice he used on people he wanted to impress. "This is a Stormbrook matter. This woman is my mate by pack law."

"Is she?" Lucan said.

"She was promised to me at nineteen."

"Promised isn't marked." Lucan finally turned his head. "She wears no mark of yours, Stagg. I can smell that from here."

Theron's wolf flashed in his eyes. "You're on neutral ground, Farquharson."

"So are you," Lucan said.

Perrin stepped between them, wearing the smooth face he kept for council.

"Nobody wants a border incident," Perrin said. "We came as family. Rhea, we'll let you think about it."

"Think about what?" I asked.

He reached into his coat and took out a folded paper with a red wax seal.

"Alpha Stagg has called you before the council," Perrin said. "You'll stand at the dark moon, in four days, to answer for bearing pups with no bond."

"And if I don't come?"

"The pups are taken into the pack's care." He said it gently, and he smiled a little when he said it. "Legally, they're nobody's."

He held the paper out.

I did not take it.

Lucan did.

He read the seal without opening it and handed the paper to one of his wolves.

"She'll be there," he said.

"I didn't ask you," I said.

"No," Lucan said. "You didn't."

Corinna came close to me one more time and touched my sleeve.

"I'm so happy you're alive," she said, and her eyes were wet again. "Whatever happens, please believe that."

I wanted to believe her.

I had wanted to believe her for ten years, whenever I let myself think of a sister at all.

Then she followed Theron and Perrin into the trees, and the three of them were gone.

The eight Ashfall wolves stayed where they were.

I turned to the children, because I could not turn to him yet.

"Inside," I said. "All of you. Wash your hands. Bram, take the frog."

"The frog's not allowed in," the smallest girl said.

"The frog is a guest. Go."

They went, six sets of muddy boots up the steps of the little house I had built myself, board by board, in the second summer.

I stayed on the grass.

Lucan took a step toward me and stopped himself.

"I came back," he said, and his voice was rough. "On the thirty-first day. Your lodge was ash."

"Don't," I said.

"I looked for you for ten years."

"You said thirty days."

It came out flatter than I meant it to.

He took it without a word, and that was worse than if he had argued.

Behind me, a small hand pulled on my coat.

Bram had come back out, with his chin up and mud on his nose, looking at the tall man with the scar.

"Mama," he said. "Is that him?"

Lucan went absolutely still.

I had never told the children anything about their father, except that he was brave.

"Go inside, Bram," I said.

"All of us can smell it, Mama," Bram said. "He smells like us."

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