All Chapters of My Alpha Rejected Me. Now He Begs for My Bread.: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Asher’s POV“Drive,” I said.“Alpha.”“Drive, Micah.”The black SUV pulled away from Silver Lake in a spray of gravel. Behind us the bonfire shrank to a small orange smudge. I kept my eyes on the road. I did not look at the mirror. If I looked in the mirror, I would see her kneeling on the shore with her hand pressed flat to her chest, and I would open the door and jump out at sixty miles an hour.My wolf was already trying to make me.Go back, Ari snarled. His voice shook the inside of my skull. Go back. Mate. MATE.I pressed my palm to my ribs. Pain rolled through my chest, hot and wet and wrong, and it had nothing to do with the old wound on my left side. It was worse. It was the sound of a rope tearing in two.“You’re bleeding,” Micah said.“I’m fine.”“Sir. You’re bleeding on the seat.”I looked down. The white cuff of my shirt had gone red. The silver wound had split open again under my coat. It did that when I was angry. It did it now, when I had done the single worst thing of

Asher’s POV“The moon turned gold over three states, Alpha,” said Councilor Vane. “I would say that’s a matter for the council.”I stood at the head of the long stone table in the Ironwood pack house with my hands behind my back and my jaw locked. It was three in the morning. The council chamber smelled of cold ashes and old cedar. Six council members sat along the sides, gray and watchful, in high-backed chairs that had belonged to their fathers.Reuben Vane sat nearest me.He was sixty, tall, with a neat silver beard and mild blue eyes. He wore a cardigan. He looked like a man who might teach you to fish. In my whole life I had never seen him raise his voice, and I had never once trusted him.“It’s a lunar event,” I said. “It will pass.”“It’s a Hearth.”Nobody in the room breathed.“That is a children’s story,” I said.“Is it?” Vane folded his hands. “Your grandfather told it well. When a true mate bond breaks and the moon feels pity, she sends a Hearth Wolf into the world. A heale

Asher’s POV“Get out, Noa,” I said again. “Please.”She didn’t. She stood in the dark hallway in a faded gray nightgown, her brown hair loose around her shoulders, and gold light rolled slowly up her arms like water filling a glass.I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life. And I had never been so afraid.“You’re bleeding,” she said.“It’s nothing.”“It’s on the floor.”“It’s happened before.”“Then it will happen again.” She crossed the hall in three quick steps and dropped to her knees beside me. Her hand landed on my shirt. Hot. Sure. My whole body jerked like she’d touched a live wire. “Stop talking. Where is it?”“Noa.”“Where?”I let out a breath. “Left side. Under the ribs.”She tore my shirt open.Buttons pinged across the floor. The lamp flickered. Cold air hit my skin, and she went still. Because there it was, in the dim gold light. A long, ugly gash that had never closed, black at the edges, lined with veins that crawled outward like frost over glass. Silver poison

Asher’s POV“Begin, Miss Bennett,” said Councilor Vane.The great hall of Ironwood held four hundred wolves. I know because I counted them, one by one, while I stood at the front with my hands behind my back and my pulse pounding in my ears. Every seat was full. Every wall was lined. Children sat on shoulders. Old men leaned on canes. The air was thick with candle smoke and the low, nervous hum of a whole pack holding its breath.They had brought my grandfather’s bed into the middle of the floor.Gideon Stone lay propped against a mountain of pillows, gray-faced and still, a candle burning at each corner. Six council members sat in a half circle behind him. Reuben Vane was in the center, hands folded, calm as a Sunday.And in front of them all stood Noa.She wore a plain gray dress and a white apron with a smear of flour at the hip. She had brought no jewelry, no armor, no proud face. She’d brought a loaf of bread wrapped in a cloth, and a look I knew well. It was the look she’d worn

Asher’s POV“You said in writing,” Noa said, and dropped four pages on my desk.It was six in the morning. I hadn’t slept. I had spent the night in my study with every copy of the Charter I could find spread across the floor, and Micah asleep sitting up in the leather chair by the fire, snoring like a bear in a cave.Noa stood on the other side of the desk in Leah’s borrowed sweater, which was too tight across the shoulders, and a pair of leggings, and the wool socks. Her hair was in a messy knot. There was flour on her cheek already. She had clearly been up longer than I had.I looked at the pages. They were written in pencil, in a round, neat hand, on paper torn from a recipe pad. The top of the first page said, in capital letters, TERMS.“I thought I was the one putting things in writing,” I said.“You were. Then I thought about it, and I decided I’d rather write mine first.” She folded her arms. “Read them.”Micah woke with a snort. “Is that bread I smell?”“It’s in the kitchen,”