The Alpha Heir’s Candle Game Chapter 07
What He Realized Too Late
Ethan watched Jade walk away from the shop without looking back and it lodged in his chest like a splinter.
She had gotten too spoiled. That was all. He’d let her have too much of him for too long, and now she was making him pay for it.
He’d fix it.
He picked up the bolt of grey wool himself.
He was going to have it delivered to the pack house and folded into her chest as an early mating gift. She’d see it and she’d know he was sorry, in the only way an Alpha heir was allowed to be sorry.
Beside him, Clara held out a jade hairpin.
“Jade would look beautiful in this.”
Very true. Like her name.
He’d asked Clara to come today for exactly this reason. Clara had a good eye. She knew what Jade liked. Jade had refused to speak to him for days.
He took the pin. “If she could just be a little more like you.” He shook his head. “Easy. Grateful. Instead of…”
He didn’t finish.
Clara’s smile flickered. She looked down at the counter.
“Jade only acts out because she knows you love her, Alpha heir. She wouldn’t dare if she didn’t.” A soft pause. “But maybe you should ease off her for a little while. She’s been hurting lately. If she gets pushed too far, she might not come back.”
Not Come back.
The words were strange.
Jade always came back. Jade was his. She’d been his since she was a pup who had climbed on him like a tree in the training yard. She’d fallen asleep against his shoulder when she was still a pup. Her shift had been in the woods behind his father’s estate with him watching from ten feet away, in case she panicked. Her first heat had been in his bed.
Where would she go. Who would she mate.
No wolf in this pack would look at her twice knowing the Alpha heir had had her for ten years and wanted her back.
He let the thought settle him. He didn’t listen to Clara after that.
He passed the Whitmore house on the way back. He did not go in. Let her stew. Let her father talk sense into her. She’d be at the pack house in a week, apologizing at his door with red eyes and swollen lips, and he’d take her to bed and forgive her.
That was how it always went.
Except by the third day back at the pack house, the wing felt wrong.
Too quiet. Her scent was fading out of the halls. Out of his bedsheets. Out of the small sitting room off the study where she’d always waited for him with tea.
He caught himself listening for her footsteps in corridors she wasn’t in.
He hated it.
By the fifth day, every other wolf on the outer road pass had returned to the pack house.
Except Jade.
Something cold began to climb up under his ribs. He was already halfway across the courtyard, ready to send a runner to the Whitmore house, when he heard two attendants talking in the archway.
“Poor Miss Whitmore. Giving up the Luna seat, of all things. She must have really quarreled with the Alpha heir.”
“You don’t understand. The attendants the Grand Luna takes to her sanctuary don’t mate. Ever. It’s a vow for life.”
“Miss Whitmore wouldn’t dare joke about something like that. Not with the Grand Luna herself.”
Ethan stopped moving.
Miss Whitmore?
He turned slowly. His voice came out level.
“Who are you talking about.”
The two she-wolves froze and dropped into a low bow.
“F-forgive us, Alpha heir. Jade Whitmore. Your attendant. The one who left with the Grand Luna.”
Left with the Grand Luna.
For life.
His inner wolf, quiet for weeks, sat up hard.
He didn’t remember running. He remembered the corridor smearing past him. The north gate. His own attendants scattering out of his way like leaves.
The Grand Luna’s escort was already on the road. Half a mile out, a slow line of guards on foot, dark cloaks against the pale winter dirt. In the middle of them, a smaller figure walking beside the Grand Luna’s palanquin.
Black hair, coming loose from her braid.
His voice tore out of his throat before he could catch it.
“Jade!”
Nothing. She kept walking.
“Jade Whitmore!”
Louder this time. Loud enough that two of the guards turned to look.
She didn’t.
She kept her chin up. She kept her steps steady. She walked toward the northern ridge with the Grand Luna’s escort around her, and she did not turn her head, not once, not even a fraction.
The Alpha heir of the Blackwell pack stood at the north gate of his own territory with the wind in his teeth and watched the she-wolf he’d been going to make Luna disappear into the pine line.
‘Why. Why doesn’t she want me anymore.’
He didn’t have an answer for it.
His inner wolf whined once, low, and lay down.