Discarded Housewife, Chosen by Her Protector novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Toast
At his gala, Ansel introduces his fated mate and hands Iris divorce papers; she takes the microphone to give Lorna the twins' care list in front of everyone, signs and lays her ring on the folder, and a stranger's touch wakes the wolf who has only ever told her to wait.
Ansel tapped his champagne glass with a spoon, and three hundred guests at his company's gala went quiet.
I stood by the ice sculpture in my green silk dress, smiling.
I was sure he was about to thank the investors.
In the car he had squeezed my hand and said, "Tonight changes everything for us. Trust me."
I did trust him.
That morning he had stood over me until I swallowed my vitamin, one amber capsule from his own supplement line.
He had handed me one every morning for six years, but he had never watched me swallow it before.
"Thank you all for coming," Ansel said, and the room laughed warmly. "Tonight I want to introduce someone."
Lorna Sedge walked up beside him in her cream dress.
An hour earlier she had fixed my zipper in the cloakroom and told me green was my color.
She was the pack's healer, the twins' tutor and the closest friend I had.
Ansel took her hand.
"Lorna is my fated mate," he said. "She will be Luna of the Blackwater pack."
Half the room knew exactly what that word meant.
The pack members went still and turned to look at me, the human wife, with pity.
The investors did not know, and they clapped, because they thought it was a love story.
Phones rose in every direction.
Someone near the stage was filming, and a woman at table four was already typing.
I waited for my husband to look at me.
He did, finally, and he smiled.
"Iris has been wonderful to my children," he said. "She'll be well provided for. There's a guest house on pack land."
A man from his office stepped out of the crowd and put a leather folder in my hands.
Inside were divorce papers.
Ansel had already signed them, and small yellow tabs showed me where to sign.
My hands went cold.
Lorna crossed the floor to me with her eyes wet.
"Iris, I'm so sorry you heard it this way," she said, and took my arm gently. "I wanted to tell you myself."
"How long?" I asked.
"A year," she said. "I couldn't make myself say it."
The whole year, she had sat in my kitchen and drunk my coffee.
Inside me, my wolf shifted.
Her name was Sable, and I had never told anyone she existed.
My mother made me swear it at nineteen, in her last week.
Never shift where anyone can see, and never claim a mate, because a wolf with no pack belongs to whoever catches her.
So I had married the heir to a pack and kept my wolf a secret from him.
Sable had always been faint and far away, and she only ever spoke a single word, whenever I reached for the truth.
Wait.
Once, when I begged her for a reason, she spoke again.
Not safe.
I had waited six years for it to be safe, and I had never found out what she was afraid of.
Now I wanted to scream, and I knew exactly what the phones would do with that.
"I'd like to say goodnight to Joey and June," I said.
"They're asleep," Ansel said. "Lorna will tell them in the morning."
"I'm their mother."
"You're not," he said gently, so only the front tables heard. "Not on paper. You never were."
Lorna squeezed my arm.
"I'll put them to bed myself," she said. "I know June needs the rocket night light on."
She did know.
I had taught her that myself.
Every phone in the room was pointed at me.
A wife who screamed would make a clip a judge could watch in court, and I would not hand Ansel that.
So I walked to the stage and took the microphone off its stand.
"Lorna," I said, and my voice carried to the back wall. "Write this down, since it's not on paper anywhere."
Ansel's smile slipped.
"June needs the rocket light on and her door open two inches," I said. "Joey's front tooth is hanging by a thread, and he'll swallow it in his sleep before he tells you, so check his pillow."
"Neither of them eats the crusts, and don't ask them twice."
"At three in the morning they will cry for me, and you will tell them the truth."
I turned to Ansel.
"Tell them their father sent me away," I said.
Nobody in the ballroom made a sound.
I set the microphone down and signed every yellow tab with the pen from the folder, and my handwriting did not shake.
I signed Iris Hart, the name my mother gave me, and not Garrow.
Then I pulled off my wedding ring and laid it on the leather cover.
"Congratulations," I said.
I did not run, and I did not look back at the stairs where the twins were sleeping.
The pack members stepped aside to let me pass, and I hated every second of the walk.
By the coat check a man in a plain black suit stood apart from the crowd.
He was very tall, and a scar cut through his left eyebrow.
He smelled of pine smoke and rain.
"Mrs. Garrow," he said.
"Not anymore."
"Then you're shaking for a different reason," he said. "I'm Ronan Tavish."
"I don't need anything from you."
"I know. I'm not offering anything." He tilted his head. "I couldn't find a wolf in you all night, and just now she woke up. Someone has kept her very quiet."
I thought of the capsule, and of Ansel standing over me until I swallowed it.
I wanted to ask what he meant.
He laid his hand over mine, and I did not pull away.
Sable had said wait to me for six years.
At his touch she lifted her head and said a different word, so loud it hurt.
Mate.
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