The Wrong Groom on My Wedding Night novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Question at Breakfast
At the wedding breakfast Leon asks, in front of the whole pack, if Lena minds that he spent the night with Dinah. If he wasn't with her, who was? She swears to find out, and finds a wolf print under her window.
Two hundred wolves of my new pack were eating my wedding breakfast when my husband asked me the question.
I sat at the head table in the green dress I'd picked for the morning after.
My left shoulder ached under the lace collar.
Wolves claim a mate on the wedding night with a bite at the shoulder, and the bite binds them for life.
Mine had been done six hours earlier, in the dark.
Leon had asked for the lights off.
He said it was an old family custom, and I was too nervous to argue.
The man in my bed hadn't said a word.
His hands were hot and sure, and I thought my husband was shy.
When I woke, the bed was empty and the pillow smelled of cedar smoke.
I told myself Leon had gone to wash.
Now he sat beside me, buttering toast, and a woman on his other side poured tea.
She had grown up in his family's house.
She was kind to everybody, and that morning she was kind to me.
She'd tucked a spare hairpin into my curls before we sat down, because mine had come loose.
At the end of the table, Leon's father stood and lifted his glass.
Timothy Ramsay was the Alpha of the Redfern pack, with a silver beard and a warm, easy voice.
"To my son's bride," he said. "She has made this pack whole."
The hall cheered.
The old woman who kept the pack's records came around the table with a plate of eggs.
She stopped behind my chair and tugged my collar aside.
She looked at the bite for a long moment.
"Good," she said quietly. "It took."
Then she pulled the lace back over it, fast, and walked away.
I didn't know why that bothered me.
Leon set down his knife.
He reached for the jam, not looking at me.
"You're not upset that I spent last night with Dinah, are you?"
He said it lightly, and he kept his eyes on the jam.
Dinah's cup rattled in its saucer.
Nobody at the head table moved.
I looked at my husband, and he went on spreading jam.
If he hadn't been with me last night, then who had?
My shoulder throbbed once, hard.
"You were with Dinah," I said.
"All night," Leon said. "She had a fever. I didn't want to leave her."
Dinah went pink to her ears.
"Lena, I'm so sorry," she said. "I told him it could wait."
She did look sorry, and she didn't look sick.
"It's no one's fault," Timothy said, and his hand landed warm on my arm. "I sat up with them until dawn, myself. You slept so deeply, dear, we hadn't the heart to wake you."
He smiled, and it was a very good smile.
He was also the third person to tell me the same story in under a minute, and none of them had asked what I remembered.
I remembered a mouth on my neck.
I remembered a man breathing hard.
I remembered that the hands on me knew exactly what they were doing, and Leon, in the six weeks I had known him, had never done more than kiss my cheek.
"I understand," I said.
Leon relaxed and went back to his toast.
Timothy patted my arm.
I picked up my fork, because two hundred people were watching me, and I ate my eggs.
I decided right there, with the fork in my hand, that I was going to find the man who had bitten me.
After breakfast I walked upstairs alone.
The bridal room was just as I had left it, except that someone had stripped the bed.
I opened the window to let in air.
The latch was unlocked.
It had been locked when I came in last night; I had checked it myself.
Under the sill, in the wet soil of the flowerbed, was one print.
A wolf's paw, as wide as my open palm, pressed deep.
Beside it was another, and another, a line of them running across the lawn toward the east fence.
I leaned out to look, and my shoulder began to burn.
It burned hotter as I leaned, and it eased when I pulled back.
Somebody out there was on the other end of the bite.
And whoever he was, he knew exactly where I was standing.
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