Sacrificed Riley to the King novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The East Wing

Wynn refuses to go home to the Alpha's bullet, the King lets her in, and her phone says her brother has been moved from the clinic in the night.

The two guards did not move.

They looked at the King, and then at me, and neither of them reached for my arm.

"No," I said.

The King turned his head slowly.

"No?"

"I'm not going back down that road," I said. "I was given freely. It was written on the paper."

His eyes were a hard amber in the lantern light, and I made myself hold them.

"Do you know what you're asking for?" he said.

"A door and a roof," I said. "Or a bullet in the back of the head from my own Alpha. One of those is waiting for me at home."

Behind me, the truck door slammed.

Garrick came around the hood with his hands open at his sides.

"Your Majesty," he said, and he did not bow, but his voice shook. "A tribute who comes home is a failed offering. The Alpha's law is that she doesn't live out the week."

The King looked at him for a long moment.

"Is that Theron Stroud's law?" he said.

"Yes."

"Then take this message back to Pinebrook," the King said. "The offering was received."

Garrick breathed out.

"Thank you," he said, and he said it to me, not to the King.

He climbed into the truck, and the engine turned over, and the red taillights went down the mountain road until the pines closed over them.

I was alone with a man everybody I knew said ate women.

"Come inside," he said. "You're blue."

I looked at my own hands.

They were.

The Keep was bigger than I expected and plainer than I feared.

Black stone walls, a long hall with a fire at the end, a set of stairs worn in the middle.

Nobody in it wore a crown, and nobody was bleeding.

A gray-haired woman in a cardigan met us at the foot of the stairs, took one look at my face, and went to find blankets without a word.

The King walked half a step ahead of me and kept to the far side of the hall.

At the top of the stairs he stopped in front of a door.

"My name is Torin Valcour," he said. "Use it or don't."

"Wynn MacBain."

"I know," he said. "East wing. Three rooms. The bath is through the second one."

"Is this where you keep them?" I said.

He turned.

"Keep who?"

"The ones before me."

For a moment, I thought he would answer.

"The call comes every year," he said. "My father wrote it into law. I don't write laws that put women in my hall."

"That isn't an answer."

"No," he said. "It isn't."

He pushed the door open and stood back, and I walked past him into the room.

His scent reached me when I passed.

Cedar smoke, and cold air, and something else underneath that made the back of my neck go tight.

He stepped away from the doorway so fast that his shoulder hit the frame.

It was a small, clumsy movement from a very large man.

I pretended I hadn't seen it.

The room had a wide bed, a window with iron bars set outside the glass, and a lock on the inside of the door.

I turned the key and heard the bolt slide home.

"The lock is yours," he said through the wood. "Nobody has the other key. Not me, not the housekeeper."

I leaned my forehead against the door.

"Why would you give me that?" I said.

"Because you are afraid of me," he said. "And you're right to wait and see."

His boots went away down the corridor.

I stood there until I heard them stop, far off, and turn back.

Then they went away again.

I sat on the bed with the blanket around my shoulders and my jacket still on.

The silver wolf was still on the collar.

I touched it, and it was cold.

Delphine had said it would be safe.

My phone buzzed against my hip.

It had one bar of signal, and it was Garrick.

Wynn, I'm at the bottom of the mountain. I called the clinic to check on Eli.

Another buzz.

He isn't there. The night nurse says the Alpha came himself an hour after we left and moved him.

A third.

She doesn't know where. I'm going to find out. Don't trust anyone in that house until I do.

I read the three messages once, standing up.

Then I tried the door.

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