Rejected in Labor: The Lycan King's Stolen Daughter novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Rejected in Labor
Dalton rejects Miriam an hour after she gave birth, in front of the pack, over her sister's scent and photographs of a rogue. She accepts it, takes her twins and walks out into the snow, where six black trucks stop at the gate and the rogue from the photos steps out.
My mate rejected me an hour after I gave birth, in front of half the pack.
The sheets were still wet under me.
I was propped on a cot in the pack infirmary, and my twins were asleep in the cradle at my elbow.
I had labored for nine hours.
My sister had brought my morning tea at dawn, the same cup she had brought me every day for years, and promised he would make it back in time.
Dalton Ravenshaw was at the border council the whole time, and no one could reach him.
Now he stood at the foot of my bed in his black coat, snow melting on his shoulders.
Three elders stood behind him, and the doorway behind them was jammed with people from the pack.
Dalton hadn't looked at the cradle once.
"Miriam Averill," he said.
His voice carried to the back of the crowd.
"I, Dalton Ravenshaw, Alpha of Cold Fork, reject you as my mate and as my Luna."
The words tore through my chest.
I curled over on the cot and couldn't breathe.
Then my eyes landed on his collar.
My sister's scent was on his neck, and the whole pack could smell it.
I knew it as well as my own, orange peel and cold cream, because I had smelled it every morning of my life.
"Camille," I said.
She was in the doorway with her phone in both hands, and her eyes were already wet.
"Miri, I'm so sorry," she said. "He came through the gate half frozen and I hugged him. I hug everybody. I didn't think."
She said it so gently that for one second I almost nodded.
Then Dalton held up a second phone.
"A week ago Camille brought me these," he said. "She cried the whole time."
He turned the screen toward the crowd.
It showed me at the northern border, with a rogue male I had never seen before.
He had his hands on my wrists, and his face was inches from mine.
Anyone looking would have said we were lovers.
"That's not what it looks like," I said. "He grabbed me. I pulled free and ran."
"Then why didn't you tell me?"
"I did. I begged you for a scent test. One test, so you'd know I was telling the truth."
Dalton's jaw moved.
"A wolfless female doesn't get a scent test," he said. "Your word is worth nothing, Miriam. You mated me for my title, and of course you found a spare."
Somebody in the crowd laughed.
I had not mated him for his title.
When I was nineteen, I fell through the ice on the Cold Fork river, and he pulled me out and wrapped me in his own coat.
I had loved him from that night.
When the Moon Goddess tied our names together, I thought I was the luckiest wolfless girl alive.
"And those two," Dalton said.
He didn't look at the cradle.
"Whoever sired them, they are not mine."
My daughter woke and began to cry.
Her brother woke a breath after, and the sound filled the room.
Elder Harlan Hesketh stepped forward with his hands folded.
"The pups were born on pack land," he said. "They stay with the pack. The female goes."
Camille covered her mouth.
"Harlan, please, she just had them."
"The pups stay," Harlan said.
Dalton said nothing.
I looked at him for a long moment, and he looked at the wall.
So I did the one thing I still had power to do.
I sat up, though my legs shook and the pain tore through me, and I said it loud enough for every wolf in that doorway.
"I, Miriam Averill, accept your rejection."
The bond between us snapped, and I almost blacked out.
I pushed through it.
"I release you, Dalton Ravenshaw. Don't look for me."
Then I lifted my son in one arm and my daughter in the other, and I stood.
"Move," I said to the elders.
Nobody had ever heard me use that voice.
Harlan's mouth opened, and Dalton said quietly, "Let her go."
The crowd parted.
I walked down the hall barefoot, leaving blood on the boards, with the babies screaming against my chest.
I pushed out the front door into the snow.
I had only a hospital gown and a blanket, and the silver coin on its cord around my neck, the one thing I had been found with as a baby.
The gate was a quarter mile away.
I got halfway before I saw the lights.
Six black trucks came up the road in a line and stopped in front of the gate.
Every door opened at once.
Men in dark coats stepped down, each with a silver wolf pinned to his collar, the same wolf stamped on my coin.
The last man out was tall and dark-haired, and I stopped walking.
He was the rogue from the photographs.
He crossed the snow toward me, and he was looking at my face.
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