They Hid My Fated Mate, So I Left With the Rival Alpha novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Sugar and the Letter
Hazel is ordered to cook for fifteen Blood Moon wolves, then the rival alpha walks into her kitchen holding a rejection letter signed with her name.
Alpha Brendan kicked open the kitchen door, and the sugar lattice cracked in my hands.
Six hours of work broke in one clean line across the middle.
"Hazel!"
"Yes, Alpha?" I set the pieces on the tray and kept my head down.
He never came to the Silver Dawn kitchens unless he was stealing a pastry.
Tonight his hands were empty and his face was gray.
"Alpha Ronan Draycott of Blood Moon arrives tomorrow at dusk," he said. "He brings fourteen wolves. That is fifteen at my table."
"Blood Moon?" The head baker dropped a whisk. "They haven't set foot on our land in twenty years."
"They sent word this afternoon. We have one day." Brendan rubbed his jaw. "I want the best feast this pack has ever served. Hazel, can you do it?"
I looked at the broken lattice, the six crates of flour, the empty larder.
I was twenty-three, the beta's daughter, and the head of the pack-house kitchens.
I had also been unmated for five years, since the Moon Goddess skipped me at eighteen, so the kitchen was where I hid from the pitying looks.
"Yes, Alpha," I said. "I'll need every pair of hands you have."
"You'll have them." He turned to go, then stopped at the door. "And you stay in here tomorrow night."
"I always do."
"Blood Moon wolves are rough company. The servers will carry everything out, and your father agrees." He tried to smile. "Same as every Gathering."
It was the same.
At every Moon Gathering since I turned eighteen, I plated the dessert, and my father carried it out himself.
I had never wondered why.
The kitchen door swung again before Brendan's boots were out of earshot.
Luna Sorcha came in with her sleeves already rolled and a crate of eggs on her hip.
"Don't look at me like that," she said. "He's panicking, so I'm helping. Where do you want the butter?"
Sorcha was thirty and had never once made me feel like a servant.
"Cold storage, bottom shelf," I said. "Thank you."
"Eat something at midnight. That's an order from your Luna." She squeezed my shoulder. "He means well, Hazel. He only wants you safe."
We cooked until the windows went gray.
The next evening the pack house roared with fifteen strangers.
I stood at the pass in my whites with a rack of roast lamb, a pot of wine reduction, and a new sugar lattice holding together by luck.
Through the swinging door I heard Brendan laughing too loudly.
I heard my father's voice, low and short.
Then the hall went quiet.
It was not the quiet of a toast.
I turned from the lamb. The door was open, and a man filled it.
He was taller than any wolf of ours, with dark curling hair and a close black beard.
His shirt was open at the collar, and his eyes were the gold of a wolf's that had stopped holding back.
Behind him, my father stood in the hall with one hand half raised, too late to stop him.
The man stared at me.
Not at the lamb or the lattice, but at me, with flour on my forearms and a ladle in my hand.
"Cinnamon," he said. His voice came out rough. "Burnt sugar. I smelled it through two walls."
"I'm sorry, the kitchen is closed to guests," I said. "Can I bring you something?"
He crossed the floor and stopped an arm's length away.
His chest rose and fell hard.
"Name," he said.
"Hazel Bramley."
"Bramley," he said. "The beta's daughter."
"Yes. Alpha Ronan, I think you want the hall."
"Five years ago," he said, "I stood at your border for three days."
I stared at him.
"I came to claim my mate. You know that. You sent me a letter that told me not to bother."
My hand tightened on the ladle.
"I don't know what you mean. I've never written to you."
"Don't." His jaw worked. "I was there when I read it. I felt the bond tear in half. You felt it too."
"I felt nothing," I said. "I've felt nothing for five years."
For a moment he only looked at me, and something moved behind the gold in his eyes.
Then he pulled a folded page from inside his shirt. The paper was soft at the creases, handled many times.
He slapped it down on the steel counter between the lamb and the wine.
Four lines in blue ink. A rusty brown smear at the bottom, dried flat.
Blood.
I do not wish to be mated to the Alpha of Blood Moon. I refuse the bond. Do not come for me again.
And under it, in a looping hand, my name.
I picked the page up with both hands.
The signature was my name, with the looping H I put on every pantry list and recipe card.
Alpha Ronan watched me read.
"So tell me why you're cooking for me," he said, "after you wrote that."
I had never seen the page before, and my name was at the bottom of it.
The kitchen was silent behind me.
I folded the letter, put it in my apron pocket, and untied the apron.
"Come with me," I said.
Then I walked through the swinging door and into the hall, where thirty wolves were waiting for someone to speak first.
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