He Loved Her, I Tore Up Our Contract

Chapter 3

I woke before the sun.

I stood at the window and watched the long blue ridges of the mountains in the distance.

Mist lay thick across the pack lands, and the air was sweet with pine resin and new dew.

Today, I would walk to the Hall of Elders.

For five years, I had been running from one question.

What were Alpha Kael and I, really, to one another?

Mates?

No. We had never been that.

In our world, only marked mates were truly mated. And me.

There was nothing on my throat at all.

I lowered my gaze to the contract on the desk.

Five years ago, I had signed my own name to it.

I still remembered the way he had looked at me that night—aloof, cold, faintly disgusted.

"There is someone else in my heart."

That was what he had said.

"But your grandfather has thrown the weight of his entire house against my father. If I do not take you, he will not send his men to help us hold the North."

"I will consent to the bond. I will not mark you. In three years, I will give you back your freedom."

I had agreed.

I had thought I could endure it.

I had been wrong.

Three years came and went, and I did not leave.

I told myself, Maybe a little longer. Maybe he'll see me yet.

Two more years passed.

I had thrown away five years of my life.

"Enough."

I picked up the contract, folded it carefully along its old creases, and slid it into a waterproof leather pouch. Then I turned and began to gather my belongings.

There was not much.

A few changes of clothes. A handful of old books I had brought from my father's house. A wooden box with the lacquer half worn off.

It had been my grandfather's gift to me on the day I awakened. I had been eighteen.

Inside the box was a faded photograph.

A young girl in a school uniform, standing in the sunlight, smiling.

Her eyes were full of yearning,for the future, for the kind of love stories children believe in.

That was me, at eighteen.

I still remembered the night Grandfather called me into his study and pressed the box gravely into my hands.

"Granddaughter," he had said. "On the day you awakened, your wolf gave you a name. Didn't she?"

I had nodded.

"It is Alpha Kael."

My grandfather had let out a long breath that carried more sorrow than I knew how to read.

"Kael is a good boy. His father was an old comrade of mine. I watched him grow up. He truly is the finest Alpha of his generation. But..."

"But there is already someone else in his heart."

I had finished the sentence for him in a voice that startled even me with its calm.

He had been quiet a long while, and at last he had only laid a hand against the side of my head.

"If a day comes when you are tired, child,leave. What I leave behind for you will be enough to last the rest of your life."

That night, my grandfather rode out for the front.

Three months later, his ashes came home to the pack.

He never came back.

I closed the wooden box and slid it into my pack.

I did not take the photograph.

Some things must finally be set down.