The Alpha King's Bride novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Lot
Finola is made to draw the Alpha King's token after her foster sister rigs the bowl, and she walks up to the throne herself while the King says: Finally.
Four hundred wolves watched me pull the Alpha King's tooth out of the Crown bowl.
At the Choosing, every woman of twenty-two drew a carved tooth from that bowl.
One tooth carried the King's sigil, and whoever drew it became his bride by dusk.
A woman whose mate had already bitten his mark into her shoulder did not have to draw.
I had no mark.
My foster mother had pushed a cup of honey tea into my hands in the antechamber and said, "Drink, sweetheart, it's for your nerves."
I had drunk it all, the way I did every morning.
My foster sister Imogen Rooke had drawn just before me.
For a month she had cried in her room about the King, and I had sat up with her through most of those nights.
She said he had three councilmen hanged in one night and never explained why.
She said she would rather die than be bonded to a monster.
Her tooth was plain bone, and she laughed with relief and squeezed my hand.
"Your turn," she said. "Whatever you draw, I'm right here."
She handed the bowl back to the steward, and her thumb brushed across the top of the pile.
I thought nothing of it.
Then it was my turn.
My fingers closed on the warmest tooth in the bowl, the one that had just left her hand.
I turned it over.
A crown over a wolf's head was cut into the bone.
The hall broke into noise.
Somebody laughed.
Somebody else said, "Rooke's kitchen girl," and the whispers spread down the rows.
"This tooth is warm," I said to the steward. "It was in Imogen's hand. She put it on top after she drew."
The steward frowned at the bowl.
"Did anyone else see this?" he asked the hall.
Four hundred wolves stayed silent.
"Finola, how could you say that?" Imogen said, and a tear ran down her cheek.
"The draw stands," the steward said.
I looked for Jasper Lowe.
He was my fated mate, and I had felt his pull in my chest since the morning I turned eighteen.
He stood in the front row in a navy suit, and he was not looking at me.
His eyes were on Imogen, and only on her.
That morning I had asked him again to bite his mark into me before the Choosing.
He had kissed my forehead and said, "After, Finola. I promise. Whatever you draw, you're mine."
Four years of after.
Now I said it loud enough for the whole hall to hear.
"Jasper, mark me now. It's the law. You can still stop this."
He did not move.
Imogen put both hands over her mouth, and her shoulders shook.
She was not crying.
Jasper looked at her hands, and then he looked at his shoes.
I turned to the guard line along the wall.
My brother Perrin stood in it, in a Rooke house jacket, six feet from me.
He had seen her thumb move.
I watched him see it.
Perrin looked at the floor.
"Perrin," I said.
He did not look up, and he did not say a word.
Somewhere behind me, a woman said, "Poor Imogen. What a miracle."
Judith Rooke came through the crowd and took my elbow.
She had raised me from eight years old, and I had never once seen her without a cup in her hand.
Tonight her hands were empty, and she squeezed mine.
"Oh, sweetheart," she said. "The law is the law. Go with your head up, and don't make a scene."
Her eyes were wet.
I wanted to lean on her.
Then I looked at the three people who had raised me and promised me, and not one of them was going to speak.
Nobody was coming to save me.
So I walked up the steps myself.
The tooth was still in my fist, and I did not hand it to the steward.
The laughing died away behind me, one row at a time.
A woman near the aisle whispered that the King would break me before the next full moon.
I did not turn around, and I did not slow down.
The hall went quiet as I climbed.
Up on the dais the Alpha King sat on a plain stone seat, in a black coat, with a scar through his left eyebrow.
Everyone said he was cold and merciless, and that he had never smiled in his life.
He had not moved the entire time the hall was laughing.
He had not looked at the bowl or at Imogen or at Jasper.
He had been looking at me.
I stopped on the top step, and I held out the tooth.
"Your Majesty," I said. "It seems I'm yours."
Aldric Ashdown rose to his full height.
He took the tooth out of my hand without touching my skin.
Then he looked at me for a long moment, and his golden eyes went dark.
"Finally," he said.
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