My Alpha Arrested Me for Stealing His Money? Find Another Doormat Luna, I'm Out novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Plate
The Beta takes the meat off the pregnant Luna's plate in front of the allied packs, the Alpha has her arrested for taking $200 for a meal, and she walks out of the gate. A truck stops on the road.
Philippa took the roast off my plate in front of three allied packs.
She did it with one hand on my arm and a sad little smile.
"I'm so sorry, Flora," she said. "I hate this part."
Every wolf at the long tables in the lodge watched her lift the meat away.
What was left on my plate was a spoonful of boiled greens and a quarter of a roll.
I was five months pregnant with the Alpha's child.
For three months the kitchen had sent me half of what a hunter got, and I had stopped asking why.
Tonight I asked.
"Philippa, please. I'm eating for two. Can I have the roast back?"
She leaned in, so close that her gold pin touched my sleeve.
"You've gained five pounds since the summer," she said, soft enough to sound kind. "Ashgrove's Beta asked me if you were ill. Wyndham's Alpha is telling people our Alpha mated a weak wolf."
"I'm pregnant."
"I know. I know. But the allies see a Luna who can't hold her weight, and I can't let them say that at our table."
She patted my arm.
"From tonight it's rabbit and greens. Nothing else. I'll try to slip you a roll when I can."
Across the table the Wyndham Alpha laughed into his glass.
I turned to my mate.
Cedric sat at the head of the table with his hand wrapped around my wrist under the cloth, where he had kept it since we sat down.
He had ordered my chair moved to his left before the feast.
When I asked why, he said the allies should see us together.
His fingers had been cold and shaking when I sat down, and they had gone steady the moment I did.
"Cedric," I said. "Did you hear that?"
"Philippa runs the house," he said, without looking at me. "Do as she says."
Then he turned to the Wyndham Alpha and asked about the price of timber.
His hand stayed on my wrist the whole time, and he never once looked at my plate.
I ate the greens.
The baby rolled and kicked under my ribs, and I pressed my palm flat over the place and told her to wait.
At eleven that night the lodge was dark.
I lay in our bed with my stomach cramping from hunger, and Cedric was somewhere downstairs with the allies and the whiskey.
At midnight I got up.
His study door was open.
The drawer of his desk held a bank envelope of cash that he used for the gate and the Watch.
I had never been given a cent of my own in fourteen months as Luna.
I took two hundred dollars.
I put on a coat over my nightgown and walked the mile to the diner at the crossroads.
I ordered a double cheeseburger, fries, a slice of cherry pie and two glasses of milk.
The bill was fourteen dollars.
I ate every bite, and for the first time in months I stopped feeling dizzy.
I was licking the last of the cherry off my fork when the diner door opened and the cold came in.
Philippa stood there with two Watch wolves behind her.
"Oh, Flora," she said. "I'm so sorry. The drawer is counted every night."
The Watch took me by both arms and walked me out through the car park in front of the cooks and the one trucker at the counter.
They did not use cuffs.
They did not have to.
They marched me back up County Road 9 and through the lodge gate.
The feast had moved out to the yard, and the allies stood around the bonfire with their cups.
Every pack was there.
Cedric came down the front steps and stopped a few feet from me.
"Is it true?" he said. "You took money from my desk?"
"I took two hundred dollars to buy dinner. I spent fourteen of it."
"It was not yours to take."
"I haven't been paid a cent in fourteen months. I'm your Luna. I was hungry."
"The Watch will hold you in the cellar until morning," Cedric said. "Theft is theft, whatever the reason."
Nobody in that yard said a word.
I looked at the man whose baby I was carrying, and he looked back at me with those flat green eyes and did not ask me one question.
The Wyndham Alpha smirked into his cup.
Philippa put her hand to her chest and looked sorry.
I thought about the cellar and its cold stone floor and the wolves who would lock the door on me.
I thought about every meal he had not noticed.
I unlatched the silver Luna's cuff from my wrist.
It had been on me since the night I was mated, and it left a pale band on my skin.
I walked up to Philippa and pressed it into her palm.
"Here," I said, loud enough for the yard. "Find another doormat Luna. I'm out."
Cedric's face went white.
"Flora."
"Don't."
"You walk out that gate and you don't come back."
"Good."
So I stepped out.
Nobody stopped me.
Philippa said, in her gentle voice, "Let her cool off, Cedric. She'll be back by morning."
I walked down County Road 9 in my nightgown and his coat, with one hand under my stomach and the cold biting through my slippers.
I had gone a mile when headlights came up behind me.
A truck slowed beside me and a window rolled down.
The driver was a big man with sandy hair and a short beard, and I knew him from the feast, where he had sat at the far end of the Stonecrest table and not said a word.
"Flora Bradford?" he said. "I'm Ronan Schroeder. Get in before you freeze."
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