Bound to the Alpha King novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Lower Yard

Hedda walks between her brother and the king's guard in front of the whole court and claims him as her page, and that night she smells nightshade in the tea meant for Rorik.

I ran down the Wolf Tower stairs in yesterday's dress with Rorik a step behind me.

The lower yard was a cold square of packed earth under the keep's north wall.

A hundred wolves of the Stone Court stood around it in a ring.

In the middle of the ring my brother held a sword he had no right to hold.

He had taken it off a dead guard, or a sleeping one.

Four men in the Chancellor's grey stood in a half circle around him, with their own blades out.

Tobren's lip was split.

He was grinning.

"Come on," he said. "Come on, who's first?"

"Tobren," I said.

He did not turn his head.

"Hedda, go back inside."

"Put it down."

"They put Father in the ground without a stone," he said, and his voice cracked in the middle. "Without a stone."

"I know."

"So I'll give the king one."

Rorik stopped at my shoulder.

I felt him gather himself to speak, and I put my hand flat on his chest without looking.

"Don't," I said. "You'll make it worse."

I felt his heartbeat under my palm, steady and slow.

The wolves around us went quiet.

I was a healer in a wrinkled dress and I had just told the Alpha King to stand still.

He stood still.

I walked into the ring.

"Hedda," said Embla behind me, sharp.

"Let her," Rorik said.

I stopped an arm's length from my brother and the point of his sword.

It shook.

He had never killed anyone in his life.

"Your hand's cut," I said, because it was.

There was a long raw line across the knuckles where the sword grip had bitten him.

"It's nothing."

"Give me your hand."

"Hedda."

"Give me your hand, Tobren, or I'll take it."

He looked at me then.

His eyes were full.

He let the sword point drop an inch.

I stepped under it and took his wrist.

My palm warmed the way it always did, and I felt the torn skin close under my thumb.

His breath hitched.

"That's better," I said. "Now give me the sword."

"They'll kill me."

"No one will touch you."

"You can't promise that."

"I can," I said, and turned around.

The four grey-coated men were watching me.

Behind them, up on the gallery rail, an old man in a silver chain stood with his hands folded.

He had rings on every finger.

He was smiling at me.

I had not met him yet, but I knew who he was by the way the wolves kept leaving a gap around him.

The Chancellor, Gisbert Rook.

"The boy has drawn steel on the king's guard," he said, pleasantly, to the whole yard.

"It is the old law, Majesty."

"He must be put to the question."

"He's nineteen," I said. "He's grieving."

"He's the heir to a conquered Alpha. He is a danger."

"Then give him to me."

The yard went quiet again.

I heard it echo off the stones.

"I took the oath for him," I said.

"My life is tied to the king's."

"If my brother is a danger to the king, he's a danger to me."

"So he'll be mine to watch."

I turned and faced the Alpha King.

"Make him my page," I said. "He carries my pouch and he sleeps in the infirmary. I answer for every hour of his day."

Rorik looked at me for a long moment.

His pale eyes flicked over my face.

I knew he was weighing it.

If he said no, I had humiliated him in front of every wolf in his court.

If he said yes, he had given a rebel a leash and put it in a rebel's sister's hand.

"I say yes," he said.

A murmur went through the ring.

"Majesty," said the Chancellor, pained.

"The healer has asked for her brother as a page," said Rorik, not looking up.

"She is bound to me by blood."

"I will not take a servant from her hand in public."

"Brack."

The captain of the guard, Dunstan Brack, a bald man with a grey moustache and a limp, pushed through the crowd.

"Majesty."

"Take the sword."

Brack took it from Tobren with no more ceremony than lifting a spoon.

"Thank you, lad," he said. "You'll feel stupid later. We all do."

Tobren laughed, once, a wet ugly sound.

I put my arm around his shoulders.

He leaned on me.

Over his head I saw the Chancellor turn from the rail and walk off with his hands still folded.

Embla stepped up next to me.

"That," she said quietly, "was either very clever or very foolish."

"Which one?"

"Ask me when you've lived a week."

I put Tobren to bed in the infirmary, an old stable undercroft with forty cots and a stove.

Ten of my Fen wounded looked up from their blankets as he came in.

One of them started to cry.

I spent the rest of the day washing wounds, changing dressings, and not thinking about the man whose heartbeat I could feel across a courtyard.

At supper I was brought to the high table.

I sat at Rorik's right hand, because the law said the bound one did.

I ate with a spoon.

I spoke to no one.

Near the end of the meal the doors opened and a servant came in carrying a silver tray.

One cup, steaming.

Sleeping tea, the steward said, for the king's bad nights.

The servant put the cup down at Rorik's elbow.

I caught the smell through the steam, sweet and green and wrong.

Nightshade.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

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