Alpha Mate Slept With His Sister-in-Law, I Left Chapter 08
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 coat hung loose on him. The silver belt at his hips sat low on the bone.
Helena and the Thorne elders behind him went still in the same second he did.
The night before, Asher had sat at the vanity and watched me lay out what I would wear.
“Will Ironridge be there tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Will Kael?”
“He might be.”
He looked down at the table. He took something out of his pocket. The thumbtack with the small blue dot. He set it on the vanity
“I want to give it to him myself. To tell him I don’t blame him. But I don’t need him either.”
He pushed it across to me. “Mommy. You hold on to it. If I see him tomorrow; I’ll do it.”
He stood up.
“Mother. You look very beautiful tomorrow.”
The door closed.
The thumbtack sat on the vanity. The little blue dot was painted on the metal cap with marker. He’d done it himself The dot wasn’t quite round. The edge of it was a little smudged.
He had saved it a whole year, just to deliver that one line. “I don’t blame you. But I don’t need you.”
The ceremony inoved through its steps: the vow, the crown, the seal.
The last step was the salutation from every pack representative
Kael broke out of the line. He pushed past the men in front of him and rushed the platform
Two Northcrest guards intercepted him at the foot of the steps.
“Sera.” His voice was hoarse. Not the steady Alpha voice. “I’ve been looking for you for a year-”
I did not look at him.
Kael shoved one of the guards aside and started up the second step.
My father stepped out from behind me. He didn’t speak. He walked down to Kael, raised his fist, and threw one punch into Kael’s left cheek. Kael went down off the steps. His lip split. A drop of blood landed on the red carpet.
My father bent over him.
“This punch you should have taken six years ago.
“When my daughter needed you, you chose silence.
“You don’t need to speak now. You need to leave.”
Helena came forward from the Ironridge line with the rest of the Thome elders. They knelt on the red carpet and begged my father’s pardon.
Kael did not kneel.
He wiped the blood off the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. He stared up at the platform, at the new Alpha King who had not, since the ceremony began, looked at him once.
The ceremony ended. I left the platform by the rear corridor toward the Alpha King’s private study. The corridor was long.
At the second turn, Kael stepped out from behind a column and blocked my path. The drop of blood from the red carpet was still
on his coat.
“Why.”
That was the first thing he asked.
“Why didn’t you ever say you were the heir of Northcrest.”
I looked at him. I had not been this close to his face in a year.
“I was stupid then,” I said. “I asked for nothing. I just went with you.”
“This past year I’ve been grateful to the people of Ironridge. They taught me one thing. Don’t waste time in a place that doesn’t treat you like a person.”
“That’s all I have.”
Kael caught my wrist.
“I know I was wrong. We start over. Asher needs a father.”
I looked at his hand around my wrist The skin was thin enough to see the bone. The nails cut short.
I pulled his fingers off, one by one.
“Asher has a grandfather.” I said. “He doesn’t need a father.”
“The father he was missing, he tore that one up himself the year he was five.”
Kael didn’t understand.
“What do you mean. Tore what up.”
I didn’t explain.
He started to open his mouth again. Down the corridor, Asher’s voice.
“Mother.”
That was the form of address Asher had learned this year, the old Northcrest way.
I walked past Kael. At the end of the corridor, Asher was already waiting.