The Alphas Broken Mate novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Cage
Lark's stepfather breaks her legs and cuts her tongue before his pack, and she is caged as tribute at Blood Moon. The Alpha who opens the cage kneels and calls her mate; she sees his red cloak and stabs him with his own dagger, and he hands it back.
Six days ago, my stepfather broke both my legs in front of our whole pack.
Merrick stood on the stage in the grey cloak he wore to every Gathering and called me a defective omega.
"No wolf of ours will carry her scent," he said. "Blood Moon takes what we cannot use."
His men took off their cloaks first and hung them on the post, so the blood would not reach the cloth.
Every cloak had a red lining.
Every man had wax pressed into both ears.
I saw it and did not know why they needed it.
They broke my left leg, then my right.
I screamed until my throat tore.
Then Merrick took out a silver knife and cut out my tongue, so the wound would never close.
My stepsister Edda knelt beside me the whole time, holding a cup to my lips.
"Drink, Lark," she whispered. "It dulls the pain. Father says the Blood Moon Alpha is fair to omegas. You'll be safe there."
I drank, because Edda was the only person at Thornfield who had ever brought me bread.
Nobody in the pack said a word.
They put me in a cart with a chain on my wrists and drove me two days to Blood Moon's mountain gate.
The cage stood in the lower yard.
It had iron bars, a floor stained brown by the people before me, and a smell I will not describe.
I had been in it three days.
Every warrior who passed wore a black cloak lined in red.
I was six when red-cloaked wolves killed my mother in our valley.
I have never forgotten that color.
I lay on my side and could not stand, and I could not beg, because I had no tongue.
Whenever a sound came out of my throat, the two guards at the cage went stiff and stepped back.
I thought I disgusted them.
On the second day a grey-haired man in a red-lined cloak brought me water himself.
"The Alpha is away on the border," he said gently. "He returns soon. Be patient, child."
He held the cup for me as Edda had.
"The rite falls on the third night," he added, and he sounded sorry. "The law is the law, and I cannot break it. I will see that you are not hurt before then."
I understood him.
The unmated warriors would come on the third night, and I would be theirs.
I decided I would not live to see it.
On the third night, the war horns blew at the gate.
Boots hit the stone of the yard, running.
Someone shouted, "Alpha Caius!" and the whole yard went quiet.
A man in a black cloak walked straight to my cage.
He was tall, broad in the shoulders, with short black hair and amber eyes.
He did not ask for the key.
He took hold of the lock with his bare hand and tore it off the bars.
The door swung open.
He stepped in, looked at my legs, and went white.
Then he dropped to his knees on the dirty floor in front of me.
"Mate," he said. His voice cracked on it. "Mine. My mate."
His hands stayed open on his thighs, where I could see them.
"Who did this to you?" he said. "Give me every name, and I will end every one of them."
I thought the fever had made him up.
A pull started in my chest, stronger than anything I had felt, and it hurt.
His eyes had turned gold.
He smelled of pine smoke and rain, and he did not touch me.
He leaned closer.
His cloak fell open, and the lining was red.
It was the same red I had carried in my head since I was six.
Behind him, a hundred wolves in red-lined cloaks stood in the torchlight and watched their Alpha kneel in my filth.
I understood nothing except that this man wore the color that killed my mother.
So I dragged myself forward on my arms.
I pulled the dagger from his belt, and I drove it into his shoulder as deep as it would go.
The guards shouted.
Wolves ran at the cage.
The Alpha raised one hand without looking back, and they stopped.
"Nobody touches her," he said.
The grey-haired man pushed through the guards and stopped at the bars.
"Alpha, she has drawn your blood," he said. "Tribute law demands that she be chained for it."
"Then the law can stand there and watch," the Alpha said, and he did not turn his head.
Blood ran down his arm and onto the floor between us.
He looked at the blade in his shoulder.
He did not look angry.
He took the hilt, drew the dagger out himself, turned it around and laid the handle in my palm.
Then he closed my shaking fingers around it with two of his.
"Again, if it helps," he said. "Then let me carry you."
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