The Alpha's Debt the King's Claim novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Second Morning
Maeve wakes at her bonding ceremony, exposes Elspeth's fake attack, calls in Torin's life-debt before the king's seal, and the High King stands to claim her.
I died nine months pregnant, on my knees in a ring of silver runes.
My husband stood six feet away and did not help me.
Torin, the Alpha of my pack, had led me into that ring himself.
A healer's gift goes quiet in the last days of a pregnancy, and he knew it.
The silver ate into my knees and my palms, and I could not heal it.
"You owe her a life, Maeve," Torin said, and his eyes were red.
"If you hadn't dragged me back that day, Elspeth would still be alive."
That day was our bonding ceremony.
His lover of ten years, Elspeth Dray, had fallen against a pillar and screamed that silver was stopping her heart.
I had caught Torin's sleeve before he could run to her.
I told the whole hall I was a healer, that her symptoms were false, and that she had done this a dozen times.
He stayed, and we were bonded.
That night a rider brought word that Elspeth had died in her bed.
For a year Torin hated me for it.
Now a woman walked out of the dark behind him, in a clean grey cloak, without her cane.
Elspeth.
She crouched in front of me, close enough to touch.
"I never left the county," she said. "A little tincture, a little patience. He buried an empty coffin and cried over it. He cries so well."
She laid her hand flat on my belly.
"Now it's your turn, Maeve. Hers too."
I tried to scream, and the silver reached my heart.
Then I opened my eyes.
I was standing in the Greywater hall in a white bonding gown, with a wreath on my head and a hundred wolves in the pews.
My belly was flat.
My knees were whole.
Torin stood beside me with my hand in his, and he was saying the first line of the vow.
A body hit the floor on my left.
"My heart!" Elspeth screamed. She was against the pillar by the door, one hand clawing her chest and the other on her carved cane. "The silver! Torin, it's stopping my heart!"
I knew every word of it.
Torin dropped my hand and ran.
The whole front row ran with him, shouting for the physician.
Only one person at the witness table stayed in his seat.
Evander Rook, the High King, had come to seal the bond, as the law requires for any Alpha's mate.
He did not look at Elspeth.
He looked at the doors.
I stepped down from the dais in my bonding gown and walked across the hall.
Torin had Elspeth in his arms. She was gasping beautifully.
"Move," he snapped at me. "She's dying."
"Then let me see her," I said. "I'm the only healer in this hall."
I knelt and took Elspeth's wrist.
Her pulse was slow and even.
"Everyone look at her gums," I said.
I put two fingers on her lip and peeled it back.
"Silver sickness turns the gums grey and the nail beds blue. I've seen it kill a man in this hall. Look."
Her gums were pink.
I held up her hand, and the nails were pink too.
"Her heart is beating at sixty, steady, and she's screaming loud enough to rattle the windows."
Elspeth's eyes flew open.
"You cruel, jealous witch," she sobbed. "Torin, make her stop."
An elder in the front pew started to speak and stopped.
Torin's face went dark.
"You're picking at a dying woman on your own wedding day," he said. "What is wrong with you?"
"Nothing is dying here," I said. "She has done this a dozen times, and you've let her."
"Get away from her!"
He shoved me.
I went down on one hand, and the burn scar on my palm stung.
That scar was from the silver fever two winters ago, when I had saved his life.
I stood and turned to the king's table.
"Your Majesty," I said. "Two winters ago I pulled Torin Brackley out of the silver fever with my own blood. He swore a life-debt to me under your seal, and your herald wrote it down."
The hall went still.
Torin stopped moving.
"A life-debt can be called once, before the Crown's seal," I said. "I'm calling it."
"Maeve," Torin said. "Don't."
"I name my price. You end this bond right now and you cut my name from your hearth."
He stared at me.
"You would burn your own bonding to prove a point?"
"I would burn it to keep from dying in it," I said.
Nobody in that hall understood what I meant.
Torin's lip curled.
"The debt is the Crown's to enforce," he said, and looked at the king. "Fine. Take it. But no pack in this kingdom will touch a healer who shamed her Alpha in front of her own guests."
"No Alpha will take you after this," an elder muttered. "You will have no pack at all."
My stomach turned over.
I had known that was the cost.
It was still better than the ring.
Evander Rook stood.
He was tall, black-haired and grey-eyed, with a long scar over his right forearm, and every wolf in the hall bowed its head.
His voice carried to the doors.
"By the Crown's right over any wolf without a pack, I claim her."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend