Wrong Bond: Your Omega Is Driving Me Crazy novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Renouncing
Osric renounces Linden at the Midwinter feast and takes Lucian, who claims he saved his life; Linden drops the bond chain in Osric's cup, rides into the blizzard and claims Hoard Law on the dragon's gold, and Ivor asks who got his ninth tail.
Osric Fenmore renounced Linden Whitby at their anniversary feast, in front of three hundred wolves.
Linden had cooked half the feast himself.
Osric stood up with his cup before the venison even came out.
The great hall of Blackmere went quiet.
Wolves always know when their Alpha is about to bite.
"Three years ago I took a fox to seal a treaty," Osric said. "Tonight I end it."
He laid his hand on Lucian's shoulder.
Lucian Sandell sat at his right hand, in white silk, in the chair that used to be Linden's.
"Two winters ago I was dying in the Wolf Cave with a silver arrow in my chest," Osric said. "Lucian brought me back."
Lucian lowered his eyes.
Linden had been in that cave.
He had knelt in Osric's blood in his fox shape and given him one of his nine tails.
One of his nine lives.
Then he had limped home before Osric woke, because white foxes who can heal get skinned for their tails.
He never told a soul.
"I renounce Linden Whitby," Osric said. "I take Lucian as my mate."
The bond mark on the back of Linden's neck went hot as a brand.
He gripped the table so he wouldn't touch it.
Half the hall cheered.
At the low table, the two elders from his Hollow sat very still.
Osric finally looked at him.
"You'll stay on," he said. "Lucian needs an attendant who knows the house."
"An attendant."
"You know where the linens are. You know how I take my wine." He shrugged. "It's more than most renounced omegas get."
"And if I say no?"
"Then the treaty dies with the bond." He drank. "Your Hollow's out of the valley at the thaw."
Forty foxes.
Linden's sister, Primrose, who was twenty and still thought he could fix anything.
His mother's garden.
Lucian smiled at him across the candles.
"Don't look so stricken, Linden," he said. "You'll still be useful. You're very good at laundry."
The wolves laughed.
Linden stood up.
His hands were shaking, so he gave them something to do.
He unhooked the silver Blackmere chain from his collar, the one every Fenmore mate wears.
He walked the length of the high table with three hundred wolves watching.
He dropped the chain into Osric's cup.
Wine splashed Osric's white shirt, right over his heart.
"Keep your attendant post," Linden said. "I'll keep my Hollow."
Nobody laughed now.
Osric wiped his chest with two fingers. "There's a blizzard, fox."
"I noticed."
"You'll be dead before the ridge." He sat back down. "And no clan in the Northmark will take in a renounced omega. Not one."
"Then I'll go where there isn't a clan."
Linden walked out through the great doors.
Nobody stopped him.
They all thought he'd be back by morning, on his knees.
The snow came sideways across the yard.
His mark throbbed with every step.
He knew what a renounced mark did.
Fever first. Then a wild false heat. Then you died, usually within two months.
Unless the mark was burned clean.
And only one fire in the whole Northmark could do that.
He went into the stables.
Osric's black stallion was the only horse fast enough to make the mountains before dawn.
Linden saddled him.
The stable boy opened his mouth.
"Tell him I borrowed it," Linden said, and rode out the back gate.
Every child in the Northmark knows the story of Grayle Peak.
Ten years ago the Winter Court marched an army up that mountain to take a dragon's gold.
The dragon burned them all the way back down to the snow line.
His name was Ivor Grayle, and he'd lived up there alone ever since.
Mothers used his name to get their kits to bed.
But every child also knows the oldest law in the Northmark.
Older than treaties. Older than the Moon Court.
Whatever walks into a dragon's hoard of its own free will belongs to the dragon.
No clan can ever take it back out.
Nobody had tried it with a person in two hundred years.
Linden rode all night.
The stallion gave out at the tree line, blowing and stamping.
Linden turned him toward home and slapped his rump.
Then he climbed.
By the time he reached the gate, he couldn't feel his feet.
The gate wasn't locked.
Of course it wasn't. Who would come here?
He followed the smell of smoke down a long black corridor.
Then the dark opened up.
Gold.
Hills of it, catching his lantern. Crowns, cups, coins, swords, a harp, an entire carriage wheel.
He walked into the middle of it.
He lay down on his back on the coins.
They were warm.
"I claim the Hoard Law," he said to the ceiling. "I came of my own will. I'm yours."
Something shifted on the far side of the hall.
A man was sitting on a heap of coins with a book in his lap.
He was enormous, silver-haired, in a black velvet coat with the elbows worn through.
Two black horns curled back from his temples.
His eyes were gold, with slits for pupils.
"Get off my coins," he said.
"I'm treasure now."
"You're wet." He turned a page. "Treasure isn't wet."
"I just rode all night through a blizzard to lie on your floor."
"I can see that. You're dripping on a crown." He closed the book. "Go home, little fox."
"I don't have one."
The man stood.
He kept standing for quite a while. He was the tallest man Linden had ever seen.
He walked across the gold toward Linden without making a sound, and crouched down beside his head.
He breathed in slowly.
Then his eyes narrowed.
"White foxes are born with nine tails," he said. "You've got eight."
His voice dropped very low.
"Who did you give the ninth one to?"
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