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Chapter 3

Shelley
Asher didn’t speak the rest of the day. He went into his room and closed the door.

That afternoon Vivienne came by to pick something up. Kael wasn’t home.

She let herself in. Asher was in the living room drawing. She walked over and looked down at his paper.

She said, “You know your daddy’s going to have a new baby soon, right? That baby is the heir of Ironridge. You...” She paused. “The pack register lists you as an orphan.”

I came out of the kitchen. Asher was sitting where she’d left him. The drawing was still on the table but the pen was down.

“Get out,” I said to Vivienne. “You are not welcome here.”

Asher walked himself back to his room. After a while I pushed his door open. He was sitting on the bed. He looked up. His eyes were red.

“Mommy. What’s an orphan?”

“Mommy. Daddy doesn’t want me anymore. Did I do something wrong?”

I pulled him into my arms. “Asher didn’t do anything wrong. This is a grown-up thing. None of it is on you.”

He leaned on my shoulder and didn’t speak. I told him about the north. About Northcrest. About a grandfather and grandmother. About an estate ten times the size of this apartment. About a lake the size of an ocean. About a yard full of pack kids his age who wrestle on the grass all day.

He listened for a long time.

Then he pulled a folded, badly creased paper out from under his pillow. The family-of-three drawing. Mommy, daddy, him. With that little tuft of hair sticking up.

“Mommy,” his voice was very small. “Can I give this to daddy myself? I want him to remember me. After that I won’t call him daddy anymore.”

I held my breath and held the tears down. I said yes.

The next morning I took Asher to the main estate. The two guards at the gate stopped us. The Alpha is in a meeting.

Asher sat down on the steps without a word. He put the drawing on his knees and held the edges down with both hands so the wind wouldn’t take it.

We waited four hours.

I called Kael. The first two times he didn’t pick up. The third time he did, in a tone he had never used on me in six years.

“Sera, I’m working out contract details with Silverfang. Don’t make a scene.”

A voice came through faintly from the other end. It was Vivienne, laughing.

Asher was less than four inches from the phone. He heard it.

He folded the family drawing in half. Folded it again. Tucked it into his shirt pocket.

“Mommy. Daddy’s busy. Let’s go home.”

He didn’t speak on the way back. As we got close to the apartment he asked,

“Mommy. Can I just call him Uncle Kael from now on? Calling him daddy makes things hard for him.”

That night my phone buzzed. A text from Kael: “Bring Asher to the main estate tomorrow morning. I have a surprise for him.”

The screen lit up. Asher launched himself across the couch into my lap. “Mommy. Daddy remembered. We’re going tomorrow!”

He couldn’t sleep that night. He got up three times to check the time.

The next morning we walked into the main estate. There were white rose arches at the doors. Petals on the floor. Rows of candles lined up in the hall. Two crossed family crests on white linen at the center of the long table.

There was no surprise. It was a rehearsal for the Marking ceremony.

That was when I understood. The text had not been from Kael. It was from Vivienne’s hand on his phone.

Asher stood in the doorway. He saw Kael bent over Vivienne’s collarbone, practicing the angle of the bite. Vivienne with her head tipped back, eyes closed.

The drawing dropped from his hand. It hit the marble with a soft sound, but the whole hall heard it.

Kael looked up and saw us. The blood went out of his face. Vivienne opened her eyes slowly, turned them on me, and the corner of her mouth pulled up.

“Sera,” she said. “Come to give us your blessing?”

Kael pushed her off and started toward Asher. Vivienne grabbed his wrist. Her voice rose sharp. “Kael. She brought the kid here to ruin this on purpose. The whole pack is here. Take a side.”

The room around us started to murmur.

Kael’s feet stopped. He looked from Vivienne’s nails to Asher’s eyes and back, three seconds. Then he lowered his voice for me alone.

“Take him home. I’ll come tonight and explain.”

He had said “I’ll come tonight and explain” too many times in six years.

“He is your son.” I looked at him. One word at a time. “Stand up for him here, today, or never again.”

Kael opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

Vivienne’s face went cold. She lifted a hand at the guards. Two of them stepped forward and took my arms. They started dragging me toward the door.

Asher charged. Five years old, all of him at once, both small hands pushing at a guard’s leg. The guard swung his arm. Asher went flying. His knee hit marble and split open.

He didn’t cry.

“Enough,” Kael shouted.

He didn’t move toward us.

Asher picked himself up. He picked up the drawing from the floor. Someone had stepped on it. He walked over to Kael. He looked up once, his grey-blue eyes the same as Kael’s, and then with shaking hands he tore the drawing into pieces.

He pressed the handful of paper into Kael’s palm.

“Uncle Kael. This was for you.”

He took my hand. “Mommy. Let’s go.”

At the door, Kael’s voice came from behind us.

“Sera.”

I stopped. Asher stopped.

I heard footsteps, and they stopped two paces behind me.

“I’ll come home tonight. We’ll talk.”

I turned. I looked at him. His fist was closed around the torn paper. The edges had pressed a red line into his hand.

“Asher. Go wait outside.”

Asher glanced at Kael once and left.

I looked at Kael. “When those two guards had me by the arms, where were you?”

“Silverfang’s people were all there, I couldn’t—”

“When Asher was waiting four hours for you, where were you?”

“Sera, the northern alliance negotiation is at a critical point. I couldn’t do anything in there.”

“You said you’d come home tonight and talk. Six years, Kael. How many times have you said you’d come home tonight and talk.”

He looked down at the handful of paper.

“He called you Uncle Kael. Do you know why.”

He raised his head and looked at me and said nothing.

Back at the apartment I threw every piece of Kael into the fire. Asher stood beside me and put the small wolf totem in too. “Mommy. You forgot one.”

We watched it burn.

“Mommy,” Asher asked, “is daddy really coming home tonight?”

“I don’t know.”

“What if he does?”

“We won’t be here.”

A pause. “Will he look for us?”

“He will.”

“Should I wait for him?”

I looked down. His face was tipped up. He was waiting for an answer.

“No, baby.”

He nodded.

A little later he turned his face away from me and wiped his eye with his sleeve. He thought I didn’t see.

A wolf cub feels his mother’s emotions. He had always felt mine. He had just never said anything.

He took my hand. He didn’t speak.

Just then, I received the mind-link from my father.

“I have sent people. They will arrive tomorrow.”

Asher looked up. “Grandfather?”

“Yes.”

He thought about it. “Will he like me?”

“Yes.”

I made one last call to Kael.

He picked up on the first ring. There was the noise of ceremonial music behind him. “Sera.”

“Congratulations on your wedding.” I said. “I'm taking Asher with me—and I hope we never meet again.”

“Wait, listen to me.”

“Goodbye.”

I shut the phone off, pulled the SIM card out, snapped it in half, and threw it in the fire. The melting plastic made Asher cough. He didn’t speak. He just pressed his face into my coat.
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  • Alpha Mate Slept With His Sister-in-Law, I Left   Chapter 9

    I walked past Kael. Asher walked toward him slowly from the other end of the hall.He told me later what happened.Kael saw him, and his eyes lit up. This was his son. A year unseen, and half a head taller.Asher stopped in front of Kael and looked at him steadily. Kael reached for his head. Asher moved his head out of reach.Asher took something out of an inside pocket and pressed it into Kael’s palm. A rusted thumbtack with a small blue dot painted on the metal cap.Kael didn’t understand.“It’s the thumbtack I used to pin my drawings up with,” Asher said. “Mommy tore the drawings down. The thumbtacks were still there. I had grandfather’s people pull them off the wall, one by one, and mail them to me. Forty-seven of them.”He paused.“I was going to ask if you remembered the drawings. But thinking about it, you probably never noticed them at all.”Kael’s fist closed on the thumbtack. The point cut into his palm. He opened his mouth. He couldn’t get one word out.Asher took a step bac

  • Alpha Mate Slept With His Sister-in-Law, I Left   Chapter 8

    A year had passed. A whole year.My father picked an autumn morning. In the central hall of Northcrest, in front of every pack under northern jurisdiction, he passed the seat of Alpha King to me. Old northern protocol meant every pack under the jurisdiction had to send a representative. Ironridge, a pack under northern jurisdiction, was on the list.Kael had no way out of it.I wore the silver ceremonial gown of the Northcrest line of succession. Asher wore a small grey suit. He had grown half a head in a year. He walked up to me and put my left hand in his.The ceremony began. Asher and I walked the long red carpet up to the high platform together.Every pack representative rose.I knew Kael had seen us, because of the way the silence behind one of the rear rows of the procession deepened.I looked up.He stood at the front of the Ironridge delegation. He was much thinner than a year ago, his eye sockets sunken, and a day’s worth of stubble on his jaw. The Ironridge Alpha’s ceremonial

  • Alpha Mate Slept With His Sister-in-Law, I Left   Chapter 7

    The Northcrest escort picked us up and took every route that bypassed Ironridge patrol points. The whole way I braced for my father’s anger. He had opposed Kael for six years. He had not seen me in six years.When we pulled up to the estate gates he didn’t say anything. He crouched down and opened his arms to Asher. Asher startled and hid behind my legs. My father stayed crouched on the step. Almost a minute.My mother was the one who finally moved. She fished half a butter cookie out of her coat pocket and held it out to Asher. He looked at it. He looked at me. I nodded. He put his small hand into hers. My mother’s tears came down at once. She said, “She’s too thin.”She meant me, not the child.My father stood and pulled me in without a word. The familiar cedar-and-old-library smell on his collar. Six years and he was still wearing the same cologne. He brushed the back of my neck. “Kael. We’ll talk about him later.”A group of pack children Asher’s age was on the lawn. They saw him a

  • Alpha Mate Slept With His Sister-in-Law, I Left   Chapter 6

    Kael stayed in our apartment for two days. He didn’t go out.On the third day, before dawn, the doorbell rang. He flew to it. Vivienne was at the door, a takeout bag in her hand, worried he hadn’t eaten.Around her neck was my pendant. The Thorne family heirloom Luna chain. The one she had taken off my neck in front of the whole pack.The same cloying woody perfume on her, even thicker than yesterday.He thought of the text she had sent from his phone to Asher. “I have a surprise for him.” He thought of Asher’s white face at the doorway of the rehearsal hall.He yanked the chain off her neck. The metal snapped and tore a thin red line into her throat.“What are you—”He didn’t let her finish. He pinned her to the doorframe with one hand on her throat.Vivienne thrashed and screamed.“Kael, have you lost it?”“I’m carrying your child!”“I’m your rightful Mate.”Kael let out a short, cold laugh. He let her go and stepped back. He watched her slide down the doorframe to the floor.“I neve

  • Alpha Mate Slept With His Sister-in-Law, I Left   Chapter 5

    By daylight Kael was still on the floor at Asher’s door. He was digging into the gap of the couch cushions with his fingers. He pulled out one long dark brown hair. It was mine. He closed his fist around it.He slept on the couch.He woke to someone laying a blanket over him. Eyes still closed, he caught the wrist and said my name.“Sera.”He opened his eyes. It was Vivienne.Her hair was loose. The thing she was wearing was the cream cashmere cardigan Kael had spent three hours picking out for me last anniversary. He recognized it on sight.In the dim living room, the outline of her hair almost looked like mine for half a second. Then the cloying woody perfume, the one I would never wear, cut through the illusion.He threw her hand off. He stared at the cardigan. His voice was cold enough to shake.“Take her clothes off.”“Kael, I was worried about you—”“I said. Take it off.”Vivienne bit her lip and slid the cardigan off her shoulders, slowly. Halfway out the door she turned back. “

  • Alpha Mate Slept With His Sister-in-Law, I Left   Chapter 4

    Marcus told me later what was happening on Kael’s side at the exact same moment. He was still at the main estate handling the rehearsal follow-up. He froze for two seconds when the call cut, then redialed. The line was dead. He redialed again, and the line was dead again.He swept a stack of family documents off the conference table and ran for his car. Vivienne called his name behind him. The door was already closed.The highway. Wipers on the fastest setting and still no road through the rain.In his head it was a different rain. Six years ago. The first time he came to that small training field at the Northcrest border. My father had been furious. He’d locked Kael in a temporary border outpost for two days. The third day was a storm. I’d put a small backpack on, scaled the wall, and shown up at the outpost door.I had said: “You’re not letting me leave Northcrest. Then I’ll leave on my own.”I had been talking to Kael. I had also been talking to my father.Kael hadn’t said a word th

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