The Alpha Captain's Secret Baby novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Three Rules

Willa holds off the pack's enforcers with a crowd of phones and sets three rules and three weeks for Emil's first shift. Pia walks in and says her son's name, which Willa never told her.

I pulled Emil behind my legs, and his eyes stayed gold.

Rhys saw it, and every muscle in his body locked.

"He's mine," Rhys said.

It wasn't a question, and he said it in the voice that makes wolves lower their heads.

Emil didn't lower his.

He leaned around my knee and stared back, with his small jaw set.

"Alpha."

The voice came from the corridor behind us.

Three men in Northmen security jackets had come through the staff door, quiet and fast.

I knew all three of them from the pack.

The oldest one kept his eyes on Rhys and not on me.

"Pack law, Alpha," he said. "An Alpha-line pup on Satterthwaite ground belongs to the Hall."

"Stand where you are," Rhys said, but he said it slowly.

Under the pack's law, he was boxed in, and I watched him know it.

I didn't wait for him to find a way out.

I took out my phone and held it up where the three men could see the screen.

"There are four hundred people on the other side of that door walking to their cars," I said. "Every one of them has a phone."

The oldest man's eyes slid to the open dock and the lot beyond.

A family in Northmen jerseys was crossing under the lights, a father with a girl on his shoulders.

"One scream from me," I said, "and your Alpha is in a video with a crying woman and a five-year-old boy."

Nobody moved.

"Step back," Rhys said at last. "All of you. Now."

The three men went back through the staff door.

It closed, and the dock was suddenly very quiet.

My phone buzzed in my hand, the fifth time since the jumbotron.

The name on the screen was Hattie.

I answered on speaker, because I didn't know what else to do.

"I saw you on the stream," Hattie said, with no hello. "Is he standing there?"

"Yes."

"Is the boy all right?"

"His eyes just went gold."

There was a short, bad silence on the line.

"Hattie?" Rhys said.

"Well," Hattie said. "Hello, Rhys."

"You left the Hall six years ago."

"I was thrown out of it, and that's a different thing." Her voice sharpened. "Listen to me, both of you. That pup shifts at the next full moon, three weeks from tonight."

"I know the signs," Rhys said.

"Then you know what happens when a pup turns for the first time with no Alpha-line wolf in the room."

Rhys looked at Emil.

He said nothing, and he didn't have to.

A pup that turns alone can die of it, and Hattie had told me so every month for five years.

"I'm too old to drive five hours to be wrong," Hattie said. "Willa, you know what you have to do."

The line went dead.

I put the phone away.

My hands wanted to shake, so I held Emil's shoulders instead.

"Three weeks," I said to Rhys. "That's all I'm giving you."

"Willa."

"I have three rules, and I won't say them twice."

He waited.

"First, Emil isn't told who you are until I say so."

"All right."

"Second, you don't touch me."

A muscle moved in his jaw.

"All right."

"Third, Pia is never alone with him. Not for a minute."

"She's my Luna."

"Then she can stand where you can see her."

He looked at me for a long moment.

I couldn't read what was in his gray eyes, and that scared me more than the guards had.

"Agreed," he said. "Where will you stay?"

"A hotel. Not your house, and not the Hall."

"I'll have a suite put on the lake."

"I'll pay for it myself."

"You won't," he said, and for the first time his voice cracked at the edge. "Let me pay for something, Willa. Please."

I said nothing, which was a yes.

Rhys lowered himself onto one knee in his skates, so his face was level with Emil's.

"What's your name?" he said.

"Emil Bjelland," my son said. "I'm five. I like your number."

Rhys's mouth opened and closed.

"Hello, Emil," he said quietly.

Footsteps clicked on the concrete behind us, light and quick.

"Willa!"

I turned.

Pia was walking down the corridor in a white coat over her cashmere, with her hands out and her eyes wet.

"Oh, thank the Moon," she said. "It really is you."

She stopped a few feet away and looked down at my son.

Her face went soft all at once.

"Hello, Emil," Pia said.

The jumbotron had shown no caption.

The radio station hadn't said his name on the air.

I had never said it once in front of her.

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