They Blamed Me for Mama's Death, So I Healed Their Worst Enemy novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: I Give You Back
Royce gives Dovie back before five packs, she sets the platter at the Alpha's feet, heals a Roan child's broken shin, and sits on the Roan Alpha's hearthstone; he puts his coat on her and says he cannot have a mate.
Royce Gragg gave me back between the deviled eggs and the apple butter, in front of two hundred people.
He said it the old way, loud, so the far fires could hear.
"I give you back, Dovie Moretz."
I had carried the ham platter across the whole bald for him.
I was still holding it.
Five years ago the knowing hit the two of us on this same gravel, at twenty-one.
He had never once claimed me.
A girl in a white coat stood at his elbow and looked at my apron.
"Say it, Price," Royce said. "Say Given. Or stand there with your mouth open like you do at home."
Price is what they have called me since I could carry a bucket.
My mother bled to death the night I was born, and our pack decided I owed it.
By our custom, a life lost at a birth is repaid by the child.
Nobody ever told me what it came to.
I had scrubbed his father's floors for twenty-six years and never once been told how close I was to paid.
"Given," I said.
My voice came out steady.
I was proud of that for about a second.
Loyal Gragg stepped up beside his son.
He is our Alpha and a deacon, and he has a church voice for everything.
"Now, honey," he said gently, and put his hand on my shoulder. "The price isn't paid. You'll come on home and finish the supper."
His hand was warm and heavy.
It had rested on my shoulder like that for as long as I could remember.
I bent down and set the ham platter on the gravel at his feet.
The ham slid a little.
Nobody laughed.
I straightened up to say something I had not worked out yet.
Then a boy screamed.
He had been climbing the stone cairn at the edge of the lot, a Roan boy, maybe ten years old.
He had gone off the top.
A split slab of rock came down after him and went through his shin.
I was the nearest one, so I ran.
He lay on his back with his leg bent wrong and the bone showing white.
Blood ran down the gravel in a thin line.
I got down on my knees in it.
"Look at me," I told him. "Look at my face, not your leg."
I put both hands on the break.
My palms went hot, the way they always do.
The heat went down through my fingers and into him, and the bone slid back where it belonged.
The skin closed.
Where my hands had been, a thin silver line ran across his shin.
The boy stopped screaming and stared at me.
Behind me the whole bald had gone quiet.
I could hear the cookfires.
The cold came up in me then, the way it always does.
My hands shook so hard I had to press them flat on my knees.
"Thank you, ma'am," the boy whispered.
I got up with blood to my wrists.
Loyal was staring at my hands.
His face had changed. He was counting.
I knew that look. I had seen it on him when he priced out a Christmas tree lot.
"Dovie," he said. "Home. Now."
I did not answer him.
Across the lot, past the Roan cookfire, a flat hearthstone sat in the grass.
At a Gathering, anyone can sit on another Alpha's hearthstone and ask for a roof.
The Alpha has to refuse her to her face.
If he doesn't, she is his guest, and nobody touches her.
A man sat beside that fire in a black wool coat with the collar up, though it was warm for October.
He had not looked up once through all of this.
I knew who he was, because everybody did.
Duncan Trivett, the Alpha of the Roan. Nobody crosses him.
I walked across the gravel with my wet red hands held out from my sides.
Behind me I heard Royce say, "Price. Price, get back here."
I sat down on the hearthstone.
"I ask the Roan for a roof," I said.
He looked up.
His eyes were pale blue, and for a moment they were only that.
Then everything around us went quiet, the way it had gone quiet around Royce five years ago, only worse.
I smelled wet slate and cut cedar, and it was coming off him.
He had stood up.
I had not seen him do it.
His hand hung open in front of him, and it was not steady.
"Her mother's blood binds her to Elk Fork," Loyal called from across the lot, pleasant and carrying. "She's bound by price, Alpha. I'd ask you to send her home."
The Roan Alpha did not look at him.
"What did her mother die of?" he said.
His voice was low and perfectly level.
"Of her," Loyal said.
Something moved in Duncan Trivett's face, and was gone.
He took off his coat.
He walked around the fire and put it over my shoulders, and he did not touch me once while he did it.
He bent his head down by my ear.
"I can't have a mate," he said, so low only I could hear. "Sit anyway."
I pulled his coat shut with my bloody hand.
I did not look back at Elk Fork.
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