They Thought My Mate Chose Her novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Red Dress
The Alpha's wolf walks to the Beta's daughter in the red gown Wenna sewed and the pack drinks the toast, so Wenna walks back into the hall and rejects him in front of everyone, and he goes to his knees.
Tressa Hocking kept swinging those red skirts across the hall floor like she'd sewn them herself.
I had sewn them.
Six weeks of hand stitching. A year of saving for the silk.
My initials were inside the left bodice seam, in red thread, where nobody would ever see them.
At four o'clock that afternoon the gown had been on the dress form beside my bed.
At four fifteen Tressa had walked into my shop with her father and lifted it off the form.
"Two years of hems," she'd said. "Call it even."
I had grabbed for it.
Clement Hocking had said, "Stand."
A Beta's voice goes into your spine. I stood there with my hand out while his daughter carried my dress to her car.
He dropped two hundred-dollar bills on my counter on his way out.
Now I was standing at the back of the old union hall in my mother's green velvet, which smelled of the cedar box it had lived in for three years.
Three hundred wolves were packed along the walls.
The Harvest Moon sat in the high windows.
"She's doing it on purpose," Kitto said beside me. "Look at her. She's swishing. That's a swish."
"I see it."
"You lined that skirt so it would move like that. She's using your physics against you."
In the middle of the floor, Cador Penhale pulled his shirt over his head.
The hall went quiet.
He had been our Alpha for thirteen months, since his father died in the boatyard. Tonight was his first Choosing.
He was also the man who walked past my shop window every morning at seven.
For the last month, he'd started walking slower.
I had never told a soul.
He dropped to his hands, and the shift went through him.
The wolf that stood up was dark brown and enormous, gray at the throat.
He lifted his nose.
Every unmated woman in that hall held her breath.
I held mine too.
Then something low in my chest turned over and pulled.
My own wolf woke up and pressed against my ribs.
The big wolf walked.
He went down the length of the hall without hurrying, head low, past the elders and the widows and every unmated woman along the wall.
Tressa swung her skirts one more time.
He went straight to her.
He put his nose to the hem of my red silk and breathed in, long and deep.
The hall erupted.
"Oh no," Kitto said. "Oh no, no, no."
Tressa laughed and put her hand on the wolf's head.
The wolf didn't look at her.
He lifted his head over her shoulder and looked down the hall.
At me.
His eyes were gold, and they were confused.
I felt that look on my skin.
Clement was already moving. He had the Choosing cup in one hand and the silver pitcher in the other.
The wolf shifted back. Cador knelt on the floorboards, breathing hard, bare to the waist.
Clement pushed the cup into his hand and kept his own hand on Cador's arm.
"Pour it, son," he said, smiling for the room. "They're all watching."
Cador looked down the hall at me again.
I didn't move.
I wanted to see what he would do.
He poured.
He held the cup out to Tressa, and she drank it, and three hundred wolves drank the toast.
Somebody started clapping, and then everybody was.
I put my glass down on the windowsill without drinking.
"Wenna," Kitto said. "Where are you going?"
"Outside. Before I throw up on the elders."
The back door of the hall opens onto the loading dock and a wind straight off Lake Superior.
I stood in it until my eyes stopped stinging.
The door banged open behind me.
Cador came out in his jeans and a borrowed flannel shirt, unbuttoned, barefoot on the cold concrete.
He stopped six feet away.
He breathed in once, slowly, the same way the wolf had at the hem.
"It's you," he said.
"I know."
"The dress smelled like you. I followed it. I was halfway to her before I understood."
"And then you poured the cup."
He dragged a hand down his face.
"Clement had my arm. The whole pack was cheering. My father's last words to me were keep Clement close, Wenna."
"So you kept him close."
"Give me a month," he said. "The cup only stands until the Rite. Keep quiet till then. I'll fix it at the full moon, quietly, the right way."
Quietly.
I thought about my initials in that bodice seam, where nobody would ever see them.
"You want me to stand at the back of the hall for a month," I said, "while she wears my dress and your toast."
"I want to not humiliate the Beta's family on my first night."
"They took it off my dress form, Cador. While her father held me still with his voice."
His face changed.
He hadn't known that.
It didn't matter. He'd poured the cup with his eyes on me.
I walked past him and went back inside.
The hall was full of noise and cider. Tressa was holding court in the middle of the floor, swinging those skirts for a circle of girls.
I walked right through the middle of the circle.
Kitto said my name, once, like a warning.
Conversations stopped one by one as I went past. People know the seamstress. Nobody expects her in the middle of the floor.
Tressa smiled at me with my lipstick-colored silk on her body.
"Wenna. Did you want to fix my hem?"
A few people laughed.
Behind me, the back door opened and shut. I didn't turn around.
"Your wolf chose a dress," I said, loud enough for the walls. "You chose their cup. Nobody in this room chose me."
Clement stepped forward. "That's enough, girl."
I turned around.
Cador was standing just inside the door with his shirt still open.
"I, Lowenna Treloar," I said, "reject you, Cador Penhale."
For one second there was nothing.
Then Tressa burst out laughing.
"She's rejecting him? He didn't even pick her!"
The laughter spread along the walls.
It stopped all at once.
Across the hall, Cador made a sound.
His knees hit the floorboards.
He put one hand flat on the floor and stayed there, head down, breathing through his teeth.
Nobody in that hall was laughing now.
At the elders' table, a chair scraped.
Merryn Penhale, seventy-eight years of the pack in one small woman, stood up and took off her reading glasses.
"Only one woman alive," she said, "can put my grandson on his knees with a word."
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