The Alpha Postponed Our Wedding, So I Married Another novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Platform Nine

Gareth makes a scene in front of capital society, Wynne boards the train and meets Prue, and at Highmoor the wedding is set for tomorrow.

My grandmother's hand tightened on my arm.

"I can send him off," she said.

"No," I said. "Let him come."

He came.

The crowd parted for him the way crowds always did.

He was tall and calm, and the lamplight caught the chestnut in his hair and the oak-leaf pin on his collar.

There was no disarray in him, no trace of someone woken at midnight. He stood composed, certain of his ground.

"Wynne," he said gently. "Can we talk somewhere private?"

"We're fine here."

He held up the envelope.

"You sent me this at midnight. With the ring inside, like a parcel."

"It is a parcel."

Somebody behind him laughed and turned it into a cough.

Gareth smiled at the crowd, a little rueful, a little patient.

"She's upset," he told them. "It's been a hard week for the whole family. Her sister is very ill."

"Her sister is at home on a cushioned bench," I said.

A woman in sable put her hand over her mouth.

Gareth's smile didn't move, but his voice dropped.

"You're embarrassing yourself."

"I've been embarrassed for six years, Gareth. This is the first time it was my idea."

"Over one postponement?"

"Three," I said.

I said it loudly enough for the reporters.

"The first was Lakewood. The second was the border. My sister was at both."

"The third was yesterday, because my sister's divorce came through."

"I can count. So can everyone here."

The flashbulbs went off.

Gareth's jaw set.

Then he did the thing I had been waiting for.

He let his wolf into his voice.

"Wynne. Come here."

It was an Alpha's command, the Redoak heir's voice, low and heavy as a hand on the back of the neck.

Half the platform flinched.

A Redoak porter by the luggage cart actually took a step toward him.

My wolf lifted her head inside me and looked at him.

She didn't come.

I wasn't Redoak. I had never been Redoak.

He had only ever talked to me as though I were.

"Go home to Lavinia," I said. "She might faint without someone to catch her."

I turned toward the carriage.

His hand closed around my wrist.

It wasn't hard. It didn't need to be.

It was simply there, the way it had always been when he wanted me to stay put.

"Excuse me," said a voice above us.

A short young woman was leaning out of the carriage door.

She had a round, rosy face, curly brown hair tied up in a kerchief, and a healer's satchel slung across her chest.

"Sir, this train leaves in two minutes, and she's on it. The princess doesn't hold trains."

Gareth looked up at her.

"And who are you?"

"I'm the healer," she said cheerfully. "If anyone's wrist gets twisted on this platform, I'll be the one fixing it."

"I'd rather not start the job early."

Gareth let go.

I climbed the steps.

The healer pulled me inside by both hands and slammed the door.

Through the glass, I saw my grandmother lift one hand to me.

I saw Gareth standing very still among the flashbulbs with my envelope in his fist.

The train jerked, and Kingsmere slid away into the steam.

"Prue Lindley," the healer said, and sat down across from me. "Millbrook Pack. We grow turnips and argue about fences."

"Wynne Ashdale."

"Oh, I know." Her brown eyes were shining. "The longest engagement in Kingsmere."

"Even we've heard of you, and we only get the papers on Thursdays."

"Ex-engagement."

"I gathered."

She dug into her satchel and came out with a paper twist of jam biscuits.

"Here. Breakfast. You look like you haven't had any since about the age of sixteen."

I laughed.

It came out rusty, and it surprised both of us.

The carriage was long and warm, with green velvet seats.

The other eight women sat in pairs and threes, mostly daughters of minor houses, mostly pretending not to stare at me.

"Why did you join?" I asked Prue.

"Because I've set every broken leg in Millbrook twice." She bit a biscuit. "I want to stitch something bigger than a cow."

"And you can't go home for three years."

"My mother has seven other children. She'll notice I'm gone around spring." She tilted her head at me. "And you?"

"I wanted to go somewhere nobody would ask me when the wedding was."

Prue snorted biscuit crumbs into her lap.

We talked the whole way north.

She was nosy about everything and ashamed of nothing.

The farms gave way to pine, and the pine gave way to moor.

By then I had told her more than I'd told anyone in six years.

I didn't tell her about the marriage.

That wasn't mine to tell yet.

It was dusk when the bus from the valley station climbed the last switchback.

Highmoor rose out of the heather ahead of us, a great gray fortress-abbey with a bell tower and a black iron gate.

Above it, the Ferris Pass cut a white notch in the mountains.

The air smelled of snow and stone and, faintly, of strange wolves.

The princess was waiting in the courtyard with a lantern.

She greeted the others and sent them inside with a steward.

Then she caught my sleeve and drew me under the arch.

"Eastmarch moved the date," she said quietly. "They want it sealed before the snow closes the pass."

"When?"

"Tomorrow at dawn. At the gate."

My heart gave one hard knock.

"And him?"

The princess looked past me, toward the lit windows of the north tower.

"He's already inside the walls," she said. "He's been waiting for you since noon."

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