His Mate, His Enemy novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Sanctuary

Ironwood takes Corinna in, and Lorcan arrives at the gate with six warriors, threatens war, then sits down in the road to wait for her.

I crossed the line on four paws, and nothing happened.

I had expected thunder.

The ground on the Ironwood side was the same dark pine needles as ours, and the wind smelled of the same lake.

Dane Kelleher turned and walked ahead of me without a word, and his six wolves closed in behind us.

I shifted back at the edge of the yard, shaking, and someone dropped a wool blanket over my shoulders.

"There you are," said a woman with short red curls and a green cardigan. "Molly. I'm the healer. Don't talk, I'll do all the talking."

She steered me into a farmhouse kitchen that smelled of coffee and woodsmoke.

Dane stayed in the doorway with his arms folded.

"Three rules," he said. "You don't spy for Blackwater. You don't touch my wards. If you hear something coming, you tell me first."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

"My father died on your side of that line," I said.

"I know," Dane said. "Mine died on yours."

He left it there and went out to the porch.

Molly ran me a bath and left me alone in it until the water started to cool.

"I'm a healer and you're a nurse," she called through the door. "So we both know what I need to check. Get out and I'll be quick."

She was quick, and gentle, and she didn't say she was sorry.

Instead she said, "Your color is bad. When did you last eat?"

"Yesterday."

"You'll eat now."

She put a bowl of soup in front of me and a spoon in my hand, and she stood over me until it was empty.

"I have stitched up three Alphas and one deer," she said. "You are the most polite patient I've ever had. It's suspicious."

I laughed.

It came out of me wrong, a cracked sound, and then I was crying into the bowl.

Molly sat down next to me and put her feet on the next chair.

"Good," she said. "Go ahead. I've got a whole box of tissues and no plans."

I slept in a narrow bed under a quilt that smelled like cedar.

I woke to the sound of horns.

The thread between us was pulled tight, and down the length of it came a flood of anger and fear that wasn't mine.

Lorcan was close. Very close.

Molly was already at the window. "Well," she said. "That's your husband."

"He isn't my husband."

"He's standing in front of my brother's gate with six warriors, so somebody should tell him."

I pulled her cardigan on over my borrowed nightgown and went out onto the porch.

Dawn was coming up gray behind the trees.

Lorcan stood in the road outside the Ironwood gate in his shirtsleeves, with six Blackwater warriors fanned out behind him.

His hair was wild. His eyes were red.

He saw me, and his whole body leaned toward me.

"Corinna."

"Go home, Lorcan."

"Come home. Please. We'll talk about all of it."

"There's nothing to talk about."

"You're my mate."

"I was," I said. "I cut it. You watched me do it."

Dane came down the porch steps and stopped beside me.

He didn't touch me or stand in front of me.

He only stood where Lorcan could see him.

"A cut mate belongs to no Alpha," Dane said. "That's your law, MacKinnon, not mine. She asked for shelter and I gave it."

"She's confused," Lorcan said. "She's grieving, and she's not thinking straight."

"I'm thinking perfectly straight."

My voice shook anyway.

Lorcan looked past Dane at me, and I saw him decide something.

"Hand her back," he said to Dane, "or I'll bring Blackwater across that line."

The six warriors shifted their feet.

I felt Dane go very still beside me.

"That's a war," Dane said. "Over a woman who doesn't want you."

"I'm not leaving her here."

"Then you're starting it."

I stepped down off the porch before either of them could say anything else.

I walked all the way to the gate, until there was only the iron bars between Lorcan and me.

I looked at his face.

I looked at the man I'd been married to for four years, and I thought about the bathroom floor.

"I'm staying here," I said. "You can burn Ironwood to the ground and I'll still be staying here."

He gripped the bars.

His knuckles turned white.

For a long moment I thought he was going to tear the gate off its hinges.

Then he let go, stepped back, and turned to his warriors.

"Go home," he said. "All of you."

"Alpha," one of them began.

"Go."

They went, slowly, looking back over their shoulders.

Lorcan stayed.

He sat down in the middle of the road, in the dirt, facing the gate.

"I'll stand here until you come out," he said.

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