The Alpha's Fine Print novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Chosen

I sat up so fast the sheet fell off my shoulder.

"You picked me."

"Yes."

"Explain."

He lay with his torn wrists across his chest, looking at the ceiling.

He told it flat and plain.

"My father ruled this pack for forty years. He wasn't cruel with his hands. He was cruel with his certainty. Nobody told him no."

"And Hobart?"

"Hobart held the Steward's refusal for thirty-eight years, and he never used it once."

"He loved my father. He couldn't bring himself to say the word."

His voice caught.

"My father died two years ago, and I took the seat. I could feel myself becoming him."

"Everyone said yes, Alpha. I started to believe I was always right."

I said nothing.

"Hobart was dying," he said. "He told me he had one more signature in him."

"I asked him to leave the clause to a stranger. Someone who would say no and mean it."

"Someone with no reason to be afraid of me."

"And you chose me."

"Hobart gave me six names. I read your briefs. All of them. I read the Whitcomb easement case four times."

I stared at him.

"You read my briefs."

"You wrote a footnote in the Whitcomb case."

"It said the law is a promise made by people who aren't here to people not yet born."

"I cried in my truck."

"That's a footnote about riparian rights."

"It was the best thing I ever read."

My anger had nowhere to land.

It swelled in my chest, hot and ugly, and it was out of proportion, and I knew it.

"You were at the funeral," I said.

"I saw you. You stood at the back with your coat buttoned wrong."

"You told me you didn't."

"I lied. I'm sorry."

"You chose me like a tool," I said. "A blade you could hold against your own throat."

"That isn't"

"Don't."

He stopped, mid-word.

I slid off the bed.

My legs were shaking, and I pulled on the nightshirt to give my hands something to do.

"No," I said.

I said it to the room.

I said it to him, and to Hobart, and to the whole neat trap of it.

"No. You don't talk. You don't touch me."

"You don't follow me out of this room. You stay on that bed until I come back."

He lay frozen on the white sheets, eyes shut, as the words took hold.

I went into the hall.

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