The Alpha Heir’s Candle Game Chapter 05
The Fabric on the Shelf
His voice was low. Something ugly moved under it.
I kept mine even. “The Grand Luna knew I wanted to leave. She gave it to me last night.” A small pause. “Sorry to disappoint you, Alpha heir. It isn’t the token you were looking for.”
His eyes darkened. He didn’t like my tone.
Feet at the door. One of the attendants stumbled in, breathless, holding out something in both hands.
Clara’s pass. The one she’d said was stolen.
“We found what you sent us for, Alpha heir. She left it in the kitchen.”
Clara’s face went a shade of pink that looked almost real. “I’m so sorry, Jade. I thought you’d taken it. I never should have brought it to the Alpha heir. I feel awful.”
I said nothing.
“Everyone out.” Ethan’s voice cut across the room.
They cleared out fast. Even Clara.
He turned to me. The cold in him was gone, replaced with something more frantic. “I already told you. Next candle, I’d let you win. Why did you go to my grandmother? What did you tell her, Jade?”
I looked at him. Really looked. And I let myself hope, one last stupid time.
“If I told you I planned to stay with the Grand Luna and never come back to the pack house, would you believe me?”
He pressed the heel of his hand into his forehead. “Stop this, Jade. You don’t drag her into a lovers’ fight. It’s disrespectful. It’s all about a pass. Why are you making this into something it isn’t!?”
Something small in my chest, the last thin thread I hadn’t known was still holding, snapped.
He still thought this was about a pass.
I stepped back and dropped into a formal bow. The kind a pack attendant gives an Alpha heir. Nothing more. “You don’t need to worry, Alpha heir. I won’t fight with you again.”
I turned.
I heard him move behind me. His hand reached for my wrist.
He missed.
…
The Grand Luna’s token got me through every checkpoint on the northern road. No wolf stopped me. No one asked a single question.
I made it home just after moonrise.
My father met me at the door with his eyes red.
My mother was inside, sitting up in bed.
Sitting up!
Her cheeks had color. Her hands, when she reached for me, were warm.
“Mother, you’re better?”
“The Alpha heir sent a healer down not long ago. She’s been working on me every few days. I forgot to write and tell you.” My father’s voice was rough. “The lung sickness is turning around, Jade.”
I stood there in the doorway with my bag still slung over my shoulder.
Ethan hadn’t been lying about the healer.
The truth should have meant something.
But it didn’t.
It sat in my chest like a small dead thing and then it slid away.
“How long can you stay?” my father asked.
“Six days.” I met his eyes. “In six days, I’m going with the Grand Luna to her sanctuary. I won’t be going back to the pack house.”
Silence.
I told them the rest.
I told them I was calling off the mating.
My father’s face went red.
“Have you lost your mind? Do you know what he has done for you, what our house owes him? Why are you always so silly!”
But my mother pulled me down onto the bed and cupped my face in both of her hands.
“Jade, love. What happened. Who hurt you.”
That was all it took.
I dropped my head into her lap and cried the way I hadn’t let myself cry since I was a pup with skinned paws.
I told her about the six passes. The seven candles. The two candles side by side.
My father slammed his hand down on the bedside table so hard the water pitcher rattled. “That is not discipline. That is a slap to your face! In his own house, in front of his own attendants! You are his promised Luna, not a she-wolf he can shame for sport!”
A slap to my face.
Yes. That was the word for it.
That was what I hadn’t been able to name for weeks.
It was never about a pass.
It was about the fact that he’d been happy to shame me to teach me a lesson.
My father sighed, long and hard, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. When he spoke again, his voice had gone quiet. “Going with the Grand Luna is a good path. No wolf in this pack, not even the Alpha heir, will look down on the wolf who serves her.”
I nodded against my mother’s shoulder.
Six days.
I slept in my mother’s bed like I was six years old again.
In the mornings I sent my father off to the council house and I took over the healer’s tea, the broth, the herbal poultices. My mother got stronger every day. Some part of me had been so ready to lose her that watching her walk to the kitchen on her own made me cry into a towel where she couldn’t see.
On the fifth day she took my hand.
“Come. There’s a fabric shop in town. I want to see you in something new when you leave with the Grand Luna.”
We walked into town together. Slow, because she was still weak. Her arm in mine.
The shop was small. Bolts of cloth stacked along the walls. My mother’s eyes lit up at a length of pale grey wool. She reached out and touched it.
“This one. For a cloak. Winters are cold up on the northern ridge.”
I lifted the bolt down for her.
Behind me, someone called.
“Jade?”