The Rogue’s Stolen Bride

Chapter Three: The Death of Me

Kaida

“I have an idea!” Maggie said, cupping my face in her hands. “Let’s run away!”

Goddess, it was tempting. It wasn’t the first time that Maggie and I had contemplated running away from my family. Pack up a bag, slip out the kitchen door, steal a horse from the stables, and ride long and hard, start a new life where no one knew who we were, or where we came from. But that was just a child’s fantasy.

“I can’t,” I said sadly, staring at the empty grate. “Lord Vance will still hold my father responsible. He still might retaliate against the pack.” As much as I wanted to be selfish, and I wanted to preserve my own life, I also didn’t want to condemn anyone else.

Maggie let go of my legs and jumped to her feet to pace in front of the fireplace. Maggie was a creature always in motion. She often said she couldn’t think clearly while her body was still. She tapped her lips with her fingers. “What if you didn’t run away? What if… you were taken against your will? That old undead guy couldn’t blame the pack then, could he?”

I shook my head in confusion. “What now?”

“I’m saying, what if you didn’t run away? What if you were k.idnapped!”

“K.idnapped?” I echoed.

Maggie was getting more excited. “Aye! What if you were snatched by villains on your way to the vampire's lair? Your father and your brothers would be innocent then!”

I wrapped my numb fingers around the arms of the chair and gripped it hard. “Are you suggesting… I k.idnap myself?”

Maggie nodded enthusiastically. “In a manner of speaking! We could pay some idlers to pounce on you, and make a good show of it! And then, once they carry you well away from the scene, then we can run away. But the story will spread far and wide about how the Alpha’s daughter was taken by miscreants!”

I sat back in the chair. “Maggie… that may just be the most brilliant plan you’ve ever concocted!”

She grinned at the compliment, her wide white smile shining brightly in her dark face. “All my plans are brilliant.”

“Truth!” I laughed a little, and then grew sober again. “But how? Where will I find such bandits? And where will I get the money?”

Maggie twisted her hands into her apron again. “There’s still your mother’s dowry,” she whispered.

My mother’s room, the Luna suite, had remained untouched since her death, apart from the maids who were tasked with cleaning it once a week. Like a shrine, all of her things remained in place, from the hairbrush on her dressing table, to the old-fashioned clothes in her wardrobe. Sometimes, when I was a girl, Maggie and I would sneak into her room and admire her things. I would smell her clothes, trying to catch a hint of her scent. Some little thing that would make me feel like I knew her. I would even wear her necklaces and gaze at my own reflection in the mirror, wondering why I couldn’t look more like my beautiful angel mother. 
That’s how we knew that at the foot of my mother’s bed was a cedar hope chest, which still contained the treasures my father had given her as a wedding gift. Silks and jewels rare manuscripts. At the bottom of the chest was a soft goatskin pouch with 200 gold pieces.

“If my father finds out I took something from my mother’s room…” I shuddered, remembering the beating I’d gotten the one and only time he’d caught me trying on her clothes.

“If your mother was alive, she would want you to take it,” Maggie said firmly. “No mother could allow her daughter to be married off to that monster.”

“Still,” I sighed. “How will I find the men to do that job?”

Maggie stopped pacing and picked up the fire poker. “I know someone.”

“You do?”

“Well, I know of someone,” She amended. “I heard the stable boys talking about him just the other day.”

“Who?”

She clutched the poker against her breast, not caring that it was leaving a smudge of black soot on her white apron. “He’s called Blackwood. He’s a rogue mercenary. Will do just about any job for money.”

“A rogue!” I recoiled, pressing my body back into the chair.

I don’t know why I was surprised. Who else would be so lawless, so desperate, that he would be willing to do other people’s dirty work for a price? I took a deep breath. “Where would I find this lout?”

“Timmy said he saw him at the Blue Pony Tavern in the village just two days past.”

I loosened my grip on the chair, and gazed down at the dark, dried blood around my ruined fingernails. “Then I guess I need to go to the village,” I said slowly.

It wasn’t the first time I had snuck out of the pack manor to visit the village. Maggie and I had done it dozens of times over the years. But I couldn’t very well waltz into the Blue Pony and tell a rogue wolf to k.idnap me. I needed a disguise, and I needed a plausible story.

“Let’s go!” I said, jumping out of the chair.

“Where are we going?” Maggie said, trailing after me.

“To steal some clothes from Riley’s chambers,” I said, sucking in a deep breath. “And then we need to get into my mother’s room to take the coins.” I looked at Maggie hopefully. My father kept the room locked with a big iron padlock, but Maggie had a very clever knack for picking locks. I pressed my hands together in a prayer-like supplication. “Please?”

Maggie huffed, and pulled a straight pin out of her curly hair. “Kaida Hawkins, you will be the death of me,” she moaned.

“Maybe,” I grinned at her, “But not today.”