Chapter 3. 28 Days to Shift or Be Banished

Josie's POV

The guard named Corran took my elbow. It was a polite grip. It was also a grip I wasn't going to get out of.

The alley door slammed open so hard it hit the wall.

Danny. Barefoot, in sweatpants, hair standing up, eyes gone Alpha-gold. He'd been Alpha for twelve hours, and the first thing they tell you an Alpha learns is that every drop of blood spilled in the pack reaches him. He'd felt mine through the link before he was awake.

"Majesty," he said. "She's my sister. Whatever this is, you talk to me."

"Alpha Morrow." The king said it pleasantly. "You've held your seat for twelve hours. Don't make me take it away before it's warm."

Danny didn't move. I loved him so much I could barely see.

Then the swinging door opened again, and the pull under my ribs went tight as a wire. I knew who it was before I turned.

He'd run. Shirt half buttoned, no shoes. He took in the guards, the blood on the board, the towel going red around my hand, and his face did something I'll remember till I die.

"Weston," the king said, without turning. "Go to bed."

The prince didn't go to bed.

The king looked from him to me and back again, a long, slow look, adding something up.

"Well," he said. "Unless someone in this kitchen has a claim on her, she comes with me."

Nobody spoke.

Danny looked at me. The guards looked at the floor. The prince stood just inside the door with his hands at his sides and his jaw so tight I could see the muscle jump, and he said nothing. The same nothing he'd said for six years.

The blood soaked through the towel and dripped off my wrist onto the tile.

I looked at him for one long breath. Then I turned to the king.

"He does," I said. "He's known for six years."

The king didn't look at me. He looked at his son.

Weston crossed my kitchen in three steps, around the guard, and took my cut hand in both of his, towel and all. Blood ran over his fingers. He didn't let go.

"She's mine," he said. "She has been since Lowmoor."

My whole body heard it. The hook under my ribs pulled tight and stayed tight, and I had to lock my knees.

The king set his mug down on my pass, very carefully, the way you put something down when you don't trust your hands.

"Six years," he said. "And you hid her from me."

"Because you told me what you'd do to her if I didn't." Weston's voice was even and very loud. "And I listened. That part's on me."

"Is that how you remember it?" the king said softly.

The other door opened. The thin man from the feast came in, the chancellor, with his chain over a dressing gown, and two more guards behind him.

"Majesty. I was told there was blood."

"There is, Hugh." The king still hadn't taken his eyes off his son. "My son has claimed a mate. Witnessed, in front of the Alpha of her pack."

The chancellor looked at me properly for the first time. I watched him do the same arithmetic the king had done and come to the same answer, and not like it.

"Then the law is clear, sir."

He smelled of expensive soap and pipe tobacco, and under both, faintly, something green and bitter I couldn't name. It bothered me the way a wrong note bothers a musician.

"The law is clear." The king turned to me at last, and his pleasant voice was back, which was worse. "Miss Morrow, a royal mate must shift by the Harvest Moon after the claim. That's twenty-eight days. If you can't, the court witch cuts the bond, and you go back to where you came from."

"I came from here," I said.

"We'll see." He nodded to the chancellor. "Until the Harvest Moon you'll live at Ashford Court, where you can be properly prepared. We leave at nine."

"No," Danny said. "She's a member of this pack, and as Alpha I—"

"Danny. Don't." I said it before I'd decided to. "It's your first day. Don't spend it going to war with the crown over me."

He looked like I'd slapped him.

"I'll go," I told the king. "On one condition. Bea Dunlap comes with me. She's sixty-four and she's the best pastry cook in the Eastern packs, and if I'm going into your house for a month, I'm taking someone who's on my side."

I had the rest of the argument ready.

"Done," said the king.

Just like that, without even a pause.

Danny didn't wait for him to leave. He crossed the kitchen and stopped in front of the prince, close, the way he stands in front of a pack wolf who's started a fight at the bar.

"Six years," my brother said.

"Yes."

"She ate Christmas dinner at the end of the table for six years, wondering why nobody wanted her. And you knew."

Weston didn't look away. "Yes."

"I'd like to hit you."

"I'd let you, Alpha."

"Not in her kitchen," Danny said, through his teeth. "She just mopped."

Weston unwound the bloody towel from my hand, looked at the cut, and wrapped it again, tighter and neater, with a clean one off the rail. His hands were steady. Mine weren't. He dropped the bloody one on the pass.

"Don't think this means I forgive you," I said, low enough that only he could hear. "I'm saying no to a cell. That's all I'm saying."

"I know."

He didn't let go of my hand.

"You could stop holding on," I said.

"I could," he agreed, and didn't, and I didn't make him, and I'm not proud of either of us.

The king was already at the door with the chancellor beside him. He stopped there and looked back at me, and for the first time all night he smiled like he meant it.

"Pack light, Miss Morrow," he said. "If the bond is cut, you won't need much where you're going."

"And where's that?"

"Ask my son."

The door swung shut behind him.

Weston's hand had gone cold around mine.