Wrong Girl, Right Alpha novel · Chapter 1 of 48
Chapter 1: Don't Reject Me Here
On her eighteenth birthday Nora follows her mate's scent across the pack hall, begs him not to reject her in public, and is called the wrong girl before Alpha Ronan crosses the floor to save her life.
Three hundred wolves watched me beg my mate not to reject me.
It was my eighteenth birthday, and the Moon Rite had just started.
Every wolf in our pack who turned eighteen that year stood in a line down the middle of the pack hall.
There were nine of us.
When the moon cleared the window, the old healer lit the candle, and our wolves were supposed to wake.
Mine didn't.
My chest stayed quiet and my hands stayed human.
My best friend stood behind the kitchen doors with her thumbs up, grinning at me.
Then the scent hit me.
Cedar and rain, warm and close, the best smell I had ever breathed in.
My knees nearly went.
Every head in the hall turned toward the back doors, and I turned with them.
Dane Hallett stood against the wall in a gray wool jacket that was too big across the shoulders.
He was nineteen, with fair hair and an easy smile, and he kept pushing the cuffs up his wrists.
The scent was pouring off him.
I decided that cedar and rain was the best thing about him.
I walked out of the line in front of everyone, which isn't allowed.
Nobody stopped me.
Celia Hallett, the old Luna, caught my elbow as I passed and squeezed it.
"Right on time," she said softly, and let me go.
I thought she meant the moon.
I stopped in front of Dane, close enough to smell the wool.
"It's you," I said. "You're my mate."
He went white.
He looked past me, at his mother and at Vanessa Pruitt, who was standing at the front with her arms crossed.
Then he looked at the floor.
My voice shook, and I hated that it did.
"Please. Don't reject me here."
I kept it low, so only he could hear.
"Not in front of them. Say it tomorrow, say it in private, but not here."
Dane swallowed.
For a moment I thought he would take my hand.
"I'm sorry," he said. "You're the wrong girl."
Then louder, so the back rows could hear him: "Nora Ellery, I reject you."
Somebody laughed.
It was a small laugh, but it carried in a room that quiet.
The bond ripped.
It felt like a tooth pulled out of my whole body at once, root and all.
I heard myself make a sound I had never made.
Dane turned and walked out of the hall with Vanessa's hand in his.
The doors swung shut behind them.
I was on my hands and knees on the polished boards, and I couldn't remember going down.
The cold started in my feet and climbed.
"She's dropping," the healer said, somewhere above me. "Somebody get her wolf up. Now."
Nobody moved.
My wolf wasn't up, and there was nothing to get.
My best friend, Tilly, pushed through the kitchen doors screaming my name and was caught by two men at the door.
I couldn't feel my fingers anymore.
Through the gray in my eyes I saw boots stop in front of me.
Black work boots, and the hem of a plain dark shirt.
Alpha Ronan Hallett had been standing at the head of the hall the whole time, with his arms folded and his face shut.
He was thirty-four, and I had never heard him raise his voice.
He dropped to one knee and turned my face toward him with two fingers.
His eyes were amber.
"Look at me, Nora."
I looked.
"A rejection that hard will stop your heart before sunrise," he said. "An Alpha's mark will hold it."
His voice was very even, and his hand was not.
"I can do it now. You'd be mine, by pack law. Luna of Hollow Creek."
Someone gasped behind him.
I tried to say no, because I didn't know him, and I didn't want a stranger's teeth in me.
Then the cold reached my heart, and it slowed.
I thought of the kitchen house, and Tilly, and every morning I would not get if I said no.
So I said yes.
"Yes," I whispered. "Do it."
Ronan slid one arm under my shoulders and pulled me against his chest.
He moved my hair aside.
His breath was hot on the curve of my neck, and I felt his teeth.
Then he bit down.
Heat flooded me, so sudden and so complete that I cried out.
It ran down my arms and into my fingers and back up into my chest, where something that had been silent for hours gave one huge, slow beat.
The cold was gone.
I could feel his heart against my ribs.
Ronan lifted his head, and there was blood on his lip.
He didn't look at me.
He looked at the hall, three hundred wolves holding perfectly still.
"By my mark, Nora Ellery is Luna of Hollow Creek," he said. "Whoever has something to say about it can say it to me."
Nobody said anything.
In the doorway, Dane had come back.
He stood with his hand on the frame, staring at the blood on my neck, and the color had left his face a second time.
Behind him, Celia Hallett was the only person in the hall who was smiling.
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