The Alpha King's Heart novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Twenty-Nine Lashes
Macy steps in front of the whip meant for her six-year-old brother and is flogged in the town square; a stranger's coat is laid on her back and the nurse finds the Alpha King's crest inside the collar.
The whip was meant for my little brother, so I put my face in front of it.
It split my cheek open.
My brother is six.
Alpha Dray Strake had climbed out of his black truck in the middle of the road to lift a stray pup out of the way, and he was still holding it when Toby barked at him and laughed.
Toby barks at every big dog.
Strake grinned and barked back.
Then his warrior stepped in.
A warrior with a coiled whip had already dragged him by the collar into the road.
"That child disrespected the Alpha of Harrow Creek," the warrior said. "Move aside, human."
"He's a baby," I said. "He was playing."
"Then he'll learn the game."
The whip came back, and I took that one on my arm.
Blood ran off my chin onto his sneakers.
He was clutching the hem of my gray work shirt with both fists, shaking so hard I could feel it in my own legs.
Around us the humans on the street looked at the pavement.
Nobody spoke.
I am nineteen, and I have lived in this town under wolf law for five years.
I knew exactly what I was allowed to do.
I dropped my eyes and went down on my knees in the street.
"I'm sorry," I said. "He's a child. Punish me instead."
Strake's boots stopped in front of me.
He was smiling.
"Public lashing, then," he said. "Since you're offering."
"Fifteen is the limit," I said. "That's your own law."
"Here, the law is whatever I say it is."
He nodded to the wolves.
Two of them took my arms.
I thought of Mom, who had already buried a husband and could not bury me.
Then I thought of Toby, and I stopped fighting.
"Toby," I whispered, without turning my head. "Go home. Lock the door. Stay with Mom."
He ran.
I watched him go past the sewing shop and around the corner, and I was glad.
Our house still has Dad's old blasting license hanging in the hall behind glass, and Mom still won't let anyone dust it.
Toby would be safe there.
They hauled me up the steps of the stage in the town square and tied my wrists to the post.
A strip of leather went between my teeth.
The law says every human in the district must stop and watch a flogging.
So they stopped and watched.
A wolf with long nails slit the back of my shirt from collar to hem.
I felt the air on my old scars.
Some of the crowd gasped.
They knew whose back it was.
The first stroke landed.
I counted, because counting is the only thing you can do.
At ten my knees stopped holding me.
At fifteen, which is the legal number, the warrior with the whip looked at Strake.
Strake lifted two fingers and the whip rose again.
I tried to say no through the leather.
At twenty-two I could not feel my hands.
At twenty-nine the strap fell out of my mouth onto the boards.
They cut me loose and I dropped on my face.
Blood ran off the edge of the stage.
A boot pressed down between my shoulder blades, hard enough to grind the bones.
"This is what happens when your kind forgets its place," Strake said, loud enough for the whole square. "Is that clear?"
Nobody answered.
He ground his heel in again.
"Is that clear?"
A few voices said, "Yes, Alpha."
I lay there with my cheek on the planks and watched a woman in the front row cover her mouth.
Strake took his boot off me and walked away, and the wolves went with him.
Nobody moved to help until the last of them was out of the square.
Then I felt something heavy and warm come down over my shoulders.
It was a man's coat, and it smelled of fresh-cut grass.
Two pairs of hands lifted me.
"Macy."
It was Emmett Sayre, my best friend since we were four, with his face gone gray.
"What did you do?" he said.
"Toby," I managed.
"He's home. He's fine. I saw him go in myself."
His voice shook, but he was holding me up with his whole body.
"I've got you," he said. "Nobody's going to touch you again. I swear it."
It was a kind thing to say.
I knew it wasn't true.
They carried me through the streets of the human district to the nurse's house, and people came to their windows.
The nurse took one look at my back and swept her table clear with her arm.
They laid me down on my stomach.
She lifted the coat away, then stopped.
"Where did you get this?" she asked.
"It was on me," I said. "Someone put it there."
"Not one of your people," she said.
She turned the collar toward the lamp.
Pinned inside it was a small silver wolf's head in a ring of thorns.
Emmett saw it and went completely still.
"That's the royal crest," the nurse whispered. "That is the Alpha King's coat."
The needle went into my shoulder, and the room went black.
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