The Alpha Rejected Me, But I Carry His Heir

Chapter 3: Dinner With the Enemy

They seat me to Kaelen's right.

It's supposed to be a sign of respect—the guest of honor next to the Alpha—and it's the absolute worst place in the entire room. Close enough to feel the heat rolling off him. Close enough that the dead bond should be a ghost but is instead alive and burning like a banked fire that no one wants to put out.

I eat like I'd never known I wanted. I laughed at the Beta's jokes. I debate border treaties and grain tithes with the frigid clarity that Silvercrest spent ten years drilling into me, and across the length of the table Rurik catches my eye once, gives me a silent, "Good job." before returning to the boar he's rapidly inhaling.

But Kaelen watches me.

Not the way other men do—I know that look, and I have one hundred boring ways of shutting it down. He looks at me like I'm a puzzle with the wrong piece slotted in. Every time I raise my glass, every time I dip my head to say something, I feel his gaze hook onto the motion like it reminds him of something he's lost and can't reach.

"You're from the northern reaches," he said at last, cutting across the room. "Silvercrest breeds them proud up there."

"We breed to survive." I met his eyes, and finally allowed myself a little of the arrogance he accused me of breeding. "Pride is what's left when survival is done with you."

His expression shifts again, just a hairline difference. "That's a rather cutting remark over dinner."

"You asked a cutting question, Alpha. I assumed you wanted the truth to follow, not a pretty response." I set my wine glass down. "Or would you prefer that I instead compliment your table setting and the quality of your wine?"

The Beta beside me coughs wine across the table. Further down, the wolves, many of them elderly, still. No one speaks to Kaelen Thorne that way. No one has either the stature or the sheer impertinence.

And Kaelen- Kaelen leans back, slowly and with infinite menace, a dangerous, unfolding grin spreads across his face.

"No," he says, voice deceptively smooth. "I think I prefer you just the way you are."

The words hit me somewhere they have no right to, and I hate it. I hate that despite five years gone by, two children conceived and lost and one severed soul bond that feels like my own, this man's tilt of the head can still coax the embers to life. I was eighteen and adored the last time he smiled my way.

I am no longer that girl.

I buried her under a red moon, and I salted the grave so that no green thing would grow.

I conjure the image of Aria's laugh. Of Rowan's small hand in mine. The healers' shocked faces as she confirms the carrying. The endless, frozen march into the desert alone, with only the ragged shirt on my back and a promise to myself that no one would ever render me small again.

I recall them all, and the embers go out, and I am a block of ice once more.

"Be careful, Alpha," I say, my tone light, almost mocking. "When wolves offer flattery, it almost always has a motive."

"It might indeed." He turns the wine glass around and around in his fingers. "I find myself curious why a bond I severed years ago, a bond that should have died then and there, feels like it's been screaming bloody murder in my chest since the moment your caravan crossed my borders."

The floor shifts.

I do not show it. I've spent five years perfecting that particular piece of mask-work, and my expression does not flicker for a second. My hand, however, finds the rough grain of the chair edge beneath the table, and grips it hard enough that my knuckles turn white.

He doesn't know. He can't know; he's testing, probing, that most fundamental of Alpha habits; probing for weaknesses, for tells. If I flinch, he wins.

If I run, he wins.

I have only one piece left to play.

I lean into him, letting my gaze turn languid, amused, and I spin the most dangerous lie I know.

"Perhaps, Alpha Thorne," I whisper, "you rejected the wrong woman, and some part of you has never quite recovered."

His turning stops.

And, down the length of the table, the heavy oak doors of the hall burst open, and a panting Silvercrest rider, caked in mud, facing a rictus of terror, rushes in with the words that freeze the blood in my veins.

"Heir Vale—forgive me—it's the children! They've arrived."