Severed Ties: Rise of the Silver Wolf novel · Chapter 2 of 48

Chapter 2: What Woke

Thea's silver wolf tears out of her in the cold courtyard while the visiting Alpha Ewan Strathmore watches, and she sets her terms for the bed he offers; at dawn her family is at the gate.

I walked out of the Moot Hall with blood running off my fingers, and nobody stopped me.

The cold hit my face.

It was the first week of March in the high Montana valley, and the courtyard was packed ice and starlight.

I made it to the middle of the yard before my legs quit.

Something in my spine pulled.

It was not the shy little tug I had waited for on the floor.

It was a hard pull at the base of my back, and it did not let go.

I fell on my hands.

"Breathe," a man's voice said from the gate. "Don't fight it. It's been shut in a long time."

I couldn't answer.

My ribs were splitting.

My arms stretched, and my jaw slid forward.

My fingers dug into the ice and came out as claws.

It hurt all at once and then everywhere.

Then it stopped.

I was standing on four legs in the snow, and the whole yard had gone sharp.

I could smell woodsmoke from the north houses and the horses in the stable.

I could smell my mother's perfume drifting out of the hall.

I looked down at my forepaws.

They were silver.

Not grey, not white, but silver, with a glitter in the fur that threw the starlight back.

"Well," said the man at the gate. "There you are."

I wheeled around and bared my teeth.

He didn't move.

He was tall and black-haired, in a long dark coat, with a scar through his left eyebrow.

I knew the crest on his collar, a stag's head in a ring.

Strathmore, the elite pack from the high country.

The whole hall had whispered about their scout all week.

He wasn't a scout, because the coat carried an Alpha's pin.

"I'm Ewan Strathmore," he said. "I won't touch you."

"When you change back, I'd like to give you my coat. Nobody should have to do that in the snow."

I didn't trust anything with a pin and a nice voice.

But my wolf did something I never asked her to do.

She sat down in the snow and looked at him.

My ears went forward, and my tail thumped once.

I was horribly embarrassed.

I forced the change back, which hurt almost as much as the first one.

Ewan turned his head away and held the coat out at arm's length without looking.

I took it and wrapped myself up.

It was still warm from his body.

"Why are you out here?" I asked. My voice came out hoarse.

"Because that was not a wolfless girl in there," he said. "And because I think your mother knew it."

I looked at my hand.

The cut across my palm had already closed to a thin pink line.

"She doesn't know anything about me."

"She knew to hand you a paper before you had a chance to try," he said quietly. "I'm sorry. I don't have a better way to say it."

My throat was tight.

"What do you want?"

"A two-year internship at Strathmore. It's a real place with a real rank, not a favor."

"Your sister was supposed to have it. Tonight I think the scouts would choose differently, and so would I."

"I just cut my family loose," I said. "I don't have a bed or a bag or a coat."

"You have my coat."

"I'm not going to be anyone's trophy."

"I haven't asked you to be."

I looked at him hard.

He looked right back, and I couldn't find a trick in it.

"Terms," I said.

"Say them."

"One. You never give me a command. Not once. No Alpha voice, no 'kneel,' nothing."

"Done."

"Two. No claim and no mark. No talk about mates or bonds until I bring it up."

Something shifted in his face, and he put it away.

"Done."

"Three. My door stays unlocked, I can leave whenever I want, and you drive me to the gate."

"Those are the easiest terms anyone has ever offered me," Ewan said.

"There's a guest room at the Keep with a lock on the inside. I'll walk you through the place myself in the morning."

I laughed, and it cracked in my chest.

"You didn't say you'd lock anything."

"No," he said. "The lock is yours."

His truck was parked outside the courtyard wall.

He opened the passenger door and walked around the back without watching me climb in.

I leaned my head against the cold window.

I was tired, but not the tired I knew.

It wasn't the dragging, sick tired that came after Daphne ran.

It was clean, the tired of a day's hard work.

I fell asleep before we reached the main road.

A hand shook me awake at dawn.

We were at the Keep's guest gate, a big iron one under the pines, and headlights had pulled up behind us.

Ewan had already gotten out.

He stood very still at the gate.

Three people were climbing out of a car on the road.

My mother, my father, and my sister, wrapped in a coat with her hair a mess.

"Thea!" my mother called. She was already crying. "Thea, honey, come home. Daphne can't shift."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

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