Rejected at the Altar, Wanted by Three Alphas

NADIA  The Alpha of Duskfall was on his knees outside my door, and he still hadn't said sorry. "Captain Frost." The guard beside him looked like he wanted the floor to swallow him. "He says he won't leave until you see him. We tried, ma'am, but he's an Alpha, and..." "It's fine, Rook." I didn't take my eyes off the man on the stone floor. "Go back to your post." Rook went, and then it was only me and Brennan Locke in the long torchlit hallway of Blackwood Citadel, three years and one broken heart apart. He'd changed. His shoulders were still huge under his expensive jacket and his dark hair was still cut short with a fade, but his face was thinner, and grey shadows sat under those sharp hazel eyes. His knuckles were wrapped in old fighting tape. He smelled of whiskey and cold car leather. He looked up at me, and for one long second he only stared, as if he didn't know who I was. I knew what he saw. Not the soft girl in the lace dress, but a woman in black combat clothes with a silver Captain's badge on her chest, black braids tied up tight and a thin scar along her left forearm. "Nadia," he said, and his voice cracked on my name. "Alpha Locke." I folded my arms. "You're a long way from home." "I drove all night." He swallowed. "Portia's dying." Of course. Of course that was the first thing. I'd seen the video like everyone else in the kingdom. Portia in a pink robe, smiling at her ring light, talking to her four million followers about face oil; then the blood running from her nose, her eyes rolling white, her body sliding off the chair. Fifty million views in two days. "I'm sorry to hear that," I said, and I wasn't. "The healers can't help her. Every healer in the south has seen her, and nobody knows what's in her blood. It's eating her alive, Nadia; her skin's going grey, her hair..." He pressed his taped fists against his knees. "There's only one cure." "And what does that have to do with me?" "Silverblood," he said. "The cure is Silverblood, and you have it." The hallway went very quiet. Three years ago, on the white chapel hill above Duskfall Lake, I stood in a wedding dress in front of the whole pack with a pregnancy test hidden in my pocket. Two pink lines. I'd taken it in the chapel bathroom an hour before, and my hands had shaken so badly I nearly dropped it in the sink. I was going to whisper it to him after the vows. Halfway through the vows, he stopped talking. His father nodded at him from the front row. Brennan turned away from me and looked at my cousin Portia in her pink silk dress. "I choose her," he said, to the pack and the human guests and the live stream camera. "She's stronger. More beautiful. More worthy." Then he took a folded paper from his jacket, signed it on the altar table and dropped our divorce papers at my feet. He spoke the old words of rejection, the bond tore inside me like a blade, and I fell on the chapel floor. I begged. I'm not proud of it. I held his trouser leg and begged, and Portia smiled down at me with her perfect lipstick, and Aunt Delphine, who raised me, never moved from her seat. The pack laughed. Somebody threw a white rose at my head. "Get up," I told the man on the floor now. "You look ridiculous." He didn't get up. "Please. Just one bag of blood, that's all. I'll pay anything; name a number." "You think this is about money?" "Then what? Tell me what you want, and I'll give it to you." Three years, and he hadn't asked if I was alive. He hadn't asked where I went that night with one bag and my wedding shoes in my hand, or how I got on the night bus with only enough money for half a ticket. The ticket seller had looked at me and said it was already paid in full, by someone who left no name. I still didn't know who. He hadn't asked about the six weeks I spent folding sheets in a Highmark laundry, or the night two rogues caught me on a dark street. I bit one of them to the bone, and the other stabbed me in the arm. I was bleeding on the road when a black car stopped, and a tall man in a dark coat stepped out and killed them both in four seconds. He knelt beside me and frowned, because under the street lights, my blood was glowing silver. That man was the Alpha King, Evander Blackwood. He trained me himself for two years, and I hated every minute of it. Now rogues ran when they heard my name. My son was born in the royal hospital with Tamsin holding my hand, and last spring I won the Elite Trials and became the first she-wolf Captain of the King's Trackers. Nobody pitied me now. "How do you know about my blood?" I asked quietly. Brennan blinked. "What?" "Who told you?" "Does it matter? Nadia, she's got weeks, maybe less..." "It matters to me." Behind me, the door creaked, and a small voice said, "Mama?" Every muscle in my body went tight. I didn't turn around. I reached back without looking, found a warm little hand and pushed it gently back inside. "Go back to Auntie Tamsin, baby. Mama's working." "But my wolf fell under the bed..." "Tamsin will get it. Go on." Small feet pattered away. I heard Tamsin's voice, bright and loud, "Come here, monster, let's find that wolf," and the door clicked shut. Brennan was staring at it. "You have a kid," he said slowly. "I have a life," I said, "one you know nothing about." He sniffed the air. I saw him do it, the way any Alpha would, and my heart stopped. But all he could smell was the citrus spray I put on my son every morning, the special one Tamsin made in the royal lab to hide Locke blood so well that not even a Locke could find it. His nose wrinkled, and he looked away. "I'm not here to fight," he said. "I'm here for Portia." "I know. You've made that very clear." "So you'll do it?" I looked down at him, the man who signed our marriage away on an altar, kneeling on a king's floor for another woman. He still hadn't said sorry. I didn't think he even knew he should. "No," I said. His face went white. "Nadia..." "Goodbye, Brennan." I stepped back and started to close the door. "Your aunt told me!" he shouted, and his hand slammed flat against the wood to stop it. "That's who. Delphine told me you had Silverblood. She told me you were here in the Citadel, and she said your blood glows silver when you bleed." I froze with my hand on the door. Only three people in the whole world knew what my blood could do: the Alpha King, who found me on that road; Tamsin, who ran the tests; and me. My aunt hadn't seen me in three years. She had never once seen me bleed. So how did she know?