The Alphas Broken Mate novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Terms

Lark lets him carry her, writes her three terms on a slate, and the Alpha agrees to every one. Then the Beta says the tribute rite is tonight and forty warriors are waiting in the hall for her.

I held the dagger over his heart for a long time.

He did not move.

His wolf was in his eyes, and still he waited, with his own blood soaking his sleeve.

My hand shook until the blade scraped the iron floor, and I let it go.

"Thank you," he said.

He did not reach for me.

I looked at his open hands, and I understood he would stay on his knees until the cage rusted if I never moved.

So I put my fingers on his sleeve myself.

That was all the yes he needed.

He slid one arm under my shoulders and the other under my ruined knees, and he stood up with me.

Heat ran out of his hands and into my legs.

The pain eased by half.

I hated how much I wanted it to keep going.

"Fetch Bryony," he told the nearest guard. "Now. Run."

The grey-haired man with the ring stepped into his path.

"Alpha, your shoulder," he said. "Let the healer see to you first."

"She sees to Lark first," Caius said.

I had not told him my name.

I had not told him anything.

It took me until the stairs to understand that he had read it in my scent.

The infirmary was a long room with herbs hung from the beams and one lamp lit.

Bryony Challoner came through the door at a walk, a stocky woman with short rust-colored hair and a leather apron stained green.

She looked at me, then at the blood down the Alpha's arm.

"Put her on the table," she said. "Then take your hands off her and sit. You're no use to me bleeding."

"She stabbed me," Caius said.

"I can see that," Bryony said. "Good arm."

I almost laughed, and the sound that came out made the two guards in the door take a step back.

Bryony noticed it.

She said nothing, but her eyes stayed on the guards a moment longer than on me.

She cut my filthy clothes off with a pair of shears and went over my legs with her thumbs.

"Both thighbones, clean breaks," she said. "Whoever did it knew how. They'll set, with him close by."

She tipped my chin up and looked into my mouth with the lamp.

"Silver blade," she said quietly. "The wound can't close on its own. A mate's touch might do it, in time. I won't promise."

Caius made a sound in his throat that was not human.

Bryony put a slate and a stick of chalk in my lap.

"You've got things to say," she said. "Say them, girl."

I wrote the first thing I thought of.

*Your cloak is red.*

Caius read it upside down from the stool.

"It's the pack's color," he said. "Why?"

I did not answer.

I rubbed it out with my wrist, and I wrote something else, in block letters, and I turned the slate toward him.

*1. You do not touch me unless I reach first.*

*2. You do not mark me. Not unless I say.*

*3. The people who did this are mine.*

He read every line aloud, slowly.

After each one he said, "Yes."

After the third one he stopped.

"Give me the names," he said. His voice had gone very low. "Please. Let me ride tonight."

I wrote two names and a pack.

*Merrick Ashdown. Edda Ashdown. Thornfield.*

The table cracked under his fist.

Bryony did not even look up from my legs.

"That was a good table," she said.

"Mine," Caius said, and the gold went out of his eyes slowly. "They are yours. I will not touch them until you say."

He sat back on the stool and let her sew up his shoulder.

He did not flinch once, and he never took his eyes off my face.

I watched him the whole time and tried to find the lie.

I could not find it.

That frightened me worse than the cage.

When Bryony was done, she set both my legs in splints and wrapped them to the hip.

"There's a bed through that door," she said. "He sleeps in the hall, I take it?"

"On the floor outside your door," Caius said. "If she'll have me within a wall's length."

I nodded once.

I was already so tired that the lamp had begun to slide sideways.

The door opened before I could close my eyes.

The grey-haired man came in without knocking and stopped at the foot of the table.

He bowed to Caius, and his ring caught the lamp.

"Alpha, forgive me," he said. "I have held the hall as long as I can."

"Osric," Caius said. "Not tonight."

"The warriors have gathered," Osric said. "It is the third night, and she was sent under the tribute law."

Caius stood up so fast the stool fell over.

"There will be no rite," he said. "She is mine."

"She is unmarked," Osric said, very calmly. "By law, until you mark her before the hall, she belongs to the unmated men who have waited three years for this."

He turned to me and gave a small, sorry bow.

"The law also requires the tribute to be present," he said. "I regret it, Alpha. Forty men are in the hall, and they are waiting for her."

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