Trapped in You by Morrison Lee: Shadows of Our Love novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Circle of Stone
At a coronation the pack howls for another woman while Corbin hangs Sabine's mother's ruby on her throat, and Sabine asks him to stand as her mate tomorrow and walks out, until a runner says a Blackmoor Alpha will hand her parents over to no one but Sabine Ardrey.
The coronation was in full swing when I walked into the clearing, and my mate was standing at the center of it with another woman at his side.
He had texted me at noon.
"Stuck at the office all night, love. Don't wait up. I'll make it up to you."
I had believed him, the way I had believed everything for three years.
Now he stood in the middle of the Circle of Stone under the full moon, in the pale suit I had ironed for him that morning.
The elders of the pack stood around the edge in grey robes.
Beside him stood the new pilot, with her blonde hair pulled up and a white flight jacket over her dress.
I stopped behind the last row of wolves.
Nobody turned around.
"Alpha," the pilot said, in a voice made for being heard. "You told me that when I became the pilot, you would give me something no one else could have."
The whole circle went quiet.
My mate smiled at her.
It was the grin I knew, the one that had won me over on the first night, warm and a little crooked.
He reached into his jacket and took out a necklace.
It was a ruby on a thin gold chain.
I knew it before the moon touched it.
It was my mother's.
After my parents died, her things were sold off piece by piece.
The ruby turned up at the Crescent Black Market, and I had begged Corbin to buy it back.
He had paid with my money and told me it was mine.
He fastened it around the pilot's throat, and the circle erupted.
They howled and clapped and stamped.
The elders nodded at each other, sure they were watching an Alpha present his Luna.
Corbin had never once introduced me to this pack as his mate.
He had never marked me, and he had never brought me into this circle.
I pushed through the wolves.
"Wait," I said.
Faces turned to me.
"Look who followed her Alpha out here," said Garrow Lazenby, Corbin's enforcer, from the shadow of a banner. "The logistics girl."
Corbin caught my wrist before I reached the chain, and his grip was hard.
"It's hers now, Sabine."
"You told me it was mine."
"It was a gift for Verena's promotion. Don't make a scene."
Verena touched the ruby with two fingers.
"I didn't even want it," she said.
She unclasped it and dropped it at my feet.
"Here. Take your toy."
It rang on the stone.
I knelt and picked it up.
The gold was warm from her skin.
The ruby had one flat edge on its back, where it had been cut away from a bigger stone, and my thumb found that edge the way it always did.
My mother had worn it every day I knew her.
I stood up.
Nobody in that circle knew what I was.
Three years ago the Council made me swear a blood-vow to bury my Alpha scent, and I buried it.
The vow ended last month, and I kept hiding, because I wanted one person to love me as nobody.
I had commanded the Iron Fang Recon Unit at twenty-four.
I had signed my parents' death money over to the man in front of me, and he had spent it on a company and a pilot.
"My parents come home tomorrow," I said. "From the Eastern Border. Their bodies, after three years."
Corbin's face changed for a moment, and I watched him count something.
"I want you at the gate with me," I said. "As my mate. In front of everyone."
Garrow snorted.
"Courier service for dead Omegas now."
I did not look at him.
I looked at Corbin.
"Alright," Corbin said at last. "I'll be there."
It was too easy.
He said it the way he said everything he didn't mean.
I closed my hand around the ruby until the flat edge bit into my palm.
So I turned my back on the Silverfang Circle and walked out of it.
Behind me, the howling started up again as if I had never been there.
I was halfway down the hill when a runner from the Council caught up with me, out of breath, in a grey cloak.
"Ma'am. The convoy from the east is early. It's at the border gate now."
"Who is leading it?"
"The Blackmoor Alpha himself."
The runner swallowed.
"He says he will hand your parents to no one but Sabine Ardrey."
I had not heard that name spoken aloud in three years.
Only the Council knew it.
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