Taming the Wolf King novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Lot
Araminta reads the human scholarship girl's name from the silver bowl, Sally pockets the real slip and says yes in front of the hall, and the Wolf King's first words to her are "Anyone but you."
Araminta Wycliffe pulled a slip out of the silver bowl and looked right at me.
"Sally Coldwell," she read.
Three hundred wolves in navy blazers turned around in their seats.
I was the only human in the great hall.
I was the only human who had ever been in it.
Somebody laughed.
Then the stained glass behind the dais blew in.
A black wolf the size of a pony came through it in a rain of red and blue glass.
He landed on the High Table and sent the candlesticks flying.
Two seniors went for him.
He threw them both into the front pews without looking.
That was our King.
Caspian Ardane had been crowned at twenty, when his father vanished on a winter run.
Since the first week of term, his wolf had been tearing out of him whenever it liked.
He broke a senior's arm in sparring.
He chewed through the door of his own tower.
So his uncle Raife Ardane, the Regent, had his council dust off an old law.
When a King's wolf runs wild, the college draws a student by Lot to keep him company, day and night, until the Blood Moon.
If the wolf breaks the Tamer's skin, the King is unfit.
Everyone in the hall knew that.
Everyone in the hall knew what a wolf that size would do to me.
I watched Araminta's hand instead of the wolf.
She was head girl. She ran the Lot.
She'd pulled one slip out of the bowl.
But a second slip was sliding out of her sleeve and fluttering down behind the dais.
Nobody else was looking at her.
They were all looking at me.
The Dean climbed out from under the High Table and straightened his gown.
"Miss Coldwell," he said. "You're human. The law doesn't bind you. You may refuse."
"And my scholarship?"
He cleared his throat.
"The Keeper's scholarship is for students in good standing. Refusing the Lot would end it."
So that was the choice.
Go home to Grandpa and the farm and the forty-one thousand dollars we owed the feed store.
Or walk up there.
The wolf was pacing the High Table now.
His hackles were up.
His eyes were silver and wrong.
I'd seen that look before, in our back pens.
It was the look of something that hurt and didn't know where.
I got up.
My knees were shaking, so I didn't let them stop.
I walked down the aisle between the pews.
Annis grabbed my sleeve as I passed her row.
"Sally, don't," she whispered. "He'll eat you."
"He won't eat me. I'm mostly freckles."
She let go.
I went up the dais steps and around behind the lectern.
The slip lay face down on the flagstones.
I picked it up and turned it over.
Araminta Wycliffe.
Her own name.
I looked up at her.
She'd gone very pale under her perfect makeup.
I folded the slip in half and put it in my blazer pocket.
Then I turned to the Dean and raised my voice so the back row could hear.
"I'll do it."
The hall went dead quiet.
"On my rules," I said. "Nobody brings a silver collar near him. Nobody locks me in with him. Nobody locks me out. And somebody sweeps up this glass before he cuts his feet."
The black wolf stopped pacing.
He was looking at me.
I didn't look back. You never look a scared wolf in the eye.
Araminta found her voice.
"She's insane. Let him have her, then."
"Thank you, Araminta," I said. "That's very generous of you."
She didn't know what I meant.
She would.
The King's tower was at the top of a hundred and nine stone steps.
The door hung off one hinge, chewed through at the bottom.
Two guards walked me up and wouldn't come further.
Inside there was a cold fireplace, a bed with the sheets torn to ribbons, and a black wolf lying in the middle of the floor.
He lifted his lip at me.
His teeth were longer than my fingers.
I'd brought an apple from the refectory.
I didn't go to him.
I sat down on the rug with my back to him, about six feet away.
I took a bite of the apple.
Behind me, he growled.
It went right through the floorboards and into my spine.
I took another bite.
Grandpa taught me this when I was six.
A wolf that's afraid of you wants a fight.
A wolf you've turned your back on has to decide what you are.
So you sit, and you eat, and you let it decide.
The growl stopped.
I heard claws on the floor.
Hot breath on the back of my neck.
A nose pushed into my hair and breathed in hard, once, twice.
I kept chewing.
My heart was going so fast I could feel it in my teeth.
Then the whole weight of him came down beside me.
A huge black head slid into my lap.
He sighed.
It was such a tired sound.
I put my hand on his neck, slow, flat, the way you touch a horse.
The fur was warm and rough.
Under it, his whole body was shaking.
"There you are," I said. "That's all. You're all right."
The shaking stopped.
He went still under my hand.
Then the fur under my palm turned to skin.
The weight in my lap changed shape.
A naked man was lying with his head on my thigh, his black hair in my fingers.
Grey eyes opened and looked up at me.
Not silver anymore.
Human.
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then Caspian Ardane closed his eyes.
"No," he said. "Anyone but you."
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