Three Wolves, One Irresistible Pull novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Chancellor's Price
At court the Chancellor demands that General Brenna Furnival marry Alpha Jorund Segrave or lose her Host; she names the old Trial of the Hearth, and both Alphas drop to their knees without a word.
Chancellor Osmund Poynings read out my price in front of four hundred wolves.
"General Brenna Furnival will marry Alpha Segrave of Redmoor at dawn, or the Ninth Host passes to the Chancellery."
His voice carried to the back of the Hall of Hollin, thin and pleased.
I stood in the middle of the marble floor in my muddy grey coat, with my sword still on my hip.
I had ridden six days from the border to hear this.
Nobody had taken my blade at the door.
Nobody dared, because four thousand of my soldiers were camped outside the city walls.
"Chancellor Poynings," I said, "I've commanded the Ninth for eight years."
"And the king, in his wisdom, wishes you settled."
The king was upstairs in his bed, too sick to lift a cup.
Everyone in the Hall knew who spoke for him.
Jorund Segrave stood ten paces to my left, in a black coat, with his hands at his sides.
He was the Alpha of Redmoor, and for six years he had been the enemy across the Ash Ford.
I had burned his granary three winters ago.
He had burned two of my forts.
The truce was four months old, and this was its price.
Jorund did not look at me.
His jaw had a scar I had put there with a cavalry sabre.
"The Alpha has agreed," the Chancellor said.
"The Alpha has been told his elders are well fed," I said.
I said it without thinking, and Jorund's head turned.
His eyes were dark and surprised.
So he had been told something.
I filed it away.
"General, a marriage between you ends the border war for good."
"A marriage to a man I've been trying to kill since I was twenty-three."
A few of the old Alphas laughed behind their hands.
The Chancellor did not.
"The Host is the crown's army, General, not yours."
"The Host answers to me, Chancellor, and I answer to the law."
I pulled my shoulders back.
"There's an older law than the writ you're holding."
His smile thinned.
"The Trial of the Hearth," I said.
Someone near the door gasped.
Nobody had called it in a hundred years.
Any woman of rank may refuse a single match and name a Trial.
Every Alpha who asks for her lives thirty days under her roof, under her rule, and she names a mate at the end, or none.
"You can't mean it," the Chancellor said.
"The law says a woman who holds a rank names it herself, in open court."
"There are no other suitors."
"Then Jorund Segrave may be one of them."
I turned my head and found the second man I had been avoiding.
He leaned on a pillar at the far side, in a green riding coat, with a smile.
Caelan Gournay, Alpha of Silverlake, had fought beside my Host for two years.
I had never once touched his hand.
He had never once left a room I was in before I did.
"Alpha Gournay," I said.
"General."
"Do you ask?"
"I was about to," he said.
A ripple went through the hall.
The Chancellor's face went flat.
"You ask for the Trial?"
"I'd ask for you in a ditch," Caelan said to me, cheerfully, "if it meant a place in the line."
I did not smile.
I wanted to, and I did not.
"Alpha Segrave?" I said.
Jorund finally looked at me.
It was a long, cold look, and it went through my coat.
"I ask," he said.
His voice was low and rough.
Something in my chest pulled tight.
I had never felt it before.
I told myself it was anger.
"Thirty days," I said to the Chancellor.
"Both of them, at Ironwatch, under my rule, and I name my own mate or none."
"And if you name none?"
"Then I keep my Host, and you keep your truce."
He folded his hands.
He had run this kingdom for a year, and he was losing a vote in front of everyone.
"Very well," he said slowly.
"The court witnesses it."
I turned to leave.
I took barely a few steps.
The sound behind me was not a voice.
It was the soft, heavy thump of knees on marble.
I turned around.
Jorund Segrave was kneeling, one hand flat on the floor, breathing like a man who had run uphill.
Caelan was on the floor beside him, his smile gone, his gold eyes wide and wild.
Neither had been ordered to kneel, and I had not said a word.
Four hundred wolves stared at the two proudest Alphas in Varnmark, down on the floor for me.
On the dais, the Chancellor began, very slowly, to smile.
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