The Alpha's Claim on the Border Ledger novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Moon of the Mark

She wakes bound to a man who calls the mark a favour, learns the law that lets her walk out any day, and reads him three false lines from the book as Mirefold's Alpha arrives under a truce flag.

I woke with a stranger's heartbeat in my chest.

It was slow and heavy, and it was not mine.

I lay under three wool blankets in a stone room with a fire popping in the grate.

Every beat of the stranger's heart rolled through me.

My left shoulder burned.

When I turned my head, a woman was sitting backwards on a chair watching me.

Half her dark-blond hair was shaved off and she had a ring through her nose.

"Morning, Mirefold," she said. "You snore."

"I do not."

"You do, a little. It's cute." She stuck out a hand. "Torvi Reave. Beta of Hawkscar, and the sister of the idiot who bit you."

I took her hand.

Her grip was warm and dry, and her grin was the first friendly thing that had happened to me in a day.

"Rhona," I said. "Where's my book?"

"On the table, where it's been all night. Nobody touched it."

She tilted her head.

"Torin sat up with it for an hour, though. He read the first page and said a word I'm not repeating before breakfast."

I sat up, and the room swung.

The bond swung with it.

Somewhere above me and to the left, a man's pulse picked up speed.

"Oh," said Torvi, watching my face. "You can feel him already. Huh."

"Is that normal?"

"No. It takes a week, usually." She chewed her lip. "Also a wolf, usually."

Before I could ask what she meant, the door opened and Torin Reave filled it.

In daylight he was bigger than I remembered.

His hair was damp and he smelled of woodsmoke and cold air.

The pale green eyes found me and then went straight to the wall behind my head.

"You're awake," he said.

"I was bitten."

"Yes."

"By you."

"Yes." He folded his arms. "Torvi, say the rules."

"You say them. You're the one who put the mark on her."

He scowled at his sister, and then at the wall again.

"The mark is open for one full moon," he said. "Twenty-eight days."

"While it's open, no wolf in either pack can take you by force or by pack law. Not Mirefold, not mine."

"I know," I said. "I've read it."

"Then you know you can end it any day. Walk out my gate, say the release words in front of one witness, and it's done."

"I know that too."

"And you know what it doesn't mean."

His jaw was tight.

"It's a favour," he said. "A legal one. I won't touch you, and I won't be touched. Nothing else."

I looked at the braid at his temple and the huge scarred hands crossed over his chest.

I could feel his pulse thudding against my own ribs.

"That's an odd thing to say to someone whose heart is going like a hammer," I said.

Torvi made a sound into her fist.

Torin's ears went red above the beard.

"That's the bond," he said stiffly. "It will fade."

"Torvi says it takes a week to start."

"Torvi talks too much."

"Torvi is right here," said Torvi.

I got out of bed.

My knees held, which surprised me, and I crossed the room in my wet-dried shirt and took the book off the table.

It was heavier than I remembered.

"You didn't ask why I ran," I said.

"You said your Alpha was robbing his dead."

"I said it to a gate full of crossbows. I haven't said it to you."

I opened the ledger on the table between us.

"Page forty. Third line."

He leaned over it.

I watched him read.

"A widow," he said. "Eleven marks."

"Dead two winters, and Mirefold's book says she was paid in full."

I tapped the next line.

"Page forty-one, the drover. He was buried in spring, and he signed for his stipend in summer."

I tapped the next.

"Page forty-four, two orphan boys. They haven't drawn a coin since the thaw. Their aunt sold the roof tiles to feed them. Three lines, three lies."

"How many more?"

"Hundreds. Six years of them."

"And you know all this because?"

"Because I wrote them."

I made myself meet his eyes.

"Every line, in my own hand, at Osric's dictation. I didn't check them against the vault until last night."

The room was quiet.

Torin straightened slowly.

"You wrote it all down and never once thought to count?"

"I'm wolfless," I said. "I was told what I was good for."

Something moved behind the green eyes.

It was not pity, and I was glad of that.

"Count it now," he said.

"I did. The vault is two thirds short."

"By how much?"

"Eleven thousand silver marks, near enough. About four hundred widows' and orphans' stipends gone in six years."

He said the word again, the one Torvi would not repeat, and this time it was low and heartfelt.

Torvi put her chin on the back of the chair.

"I like her," she said.

"She's a claim, not a pet."

"I'm not either of those," I said.

He looked at me.

I looked back.

For about three heartbeats, mine and his, neither of us seemed to remember we had met yesterday.

Then a horn sounded from the walls.

One long note, then two short, and Torvi was off the chair and halfway to the door.

"That's the truce call," she said. "Someone's at the border asking for talks."

"Who?"

She came back from the window with a sour look.

"Thirty Mirefold wolves under a white flag," she said. "And a man in front I'd recognise by his hair oil alone."

My stomach turned over.

Osric had come for his bookkeeper.

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