The Alpha Heir’s Candle Game Chapter 10
The Longer Candle
Clara knew her place. She wouldn’t say to Ethan’s face what she thought.
And Ethan couldn’t hear it on his own.
He spent the next day walking around the sanctuary with a cold expression, as if I owed him gold.
Then Callum came.
Callum was the former Beta of the pack. Retired to the sanctuary years ago. Quiet. Kind. He kept to himself and answered when asked.
My first weeks up on the ridge, without warm water, my hands had cracked open at the knuckles from the cold. Frostbite. I’d hidden them under my sleeves.
Callum noticed.
He came that afternoon with a small clay pot of salve.
I took it with both hands and thanked him.
Then someone yanked me back by the arm.
Ethan.
He was holding onto me so hard my shoulder pulled.
His voice came out ragged. Loud. He didn’t care who heard.
“So this is why. You came with my grandmother, you won’t come home, you won’t mate me. Because you had your eye on some retired Beta at a sanctuary? Jade Whitmore. I never knew you’re such a… A Luna’s title wasn’t enough, so you’ll take a Beta with a moon-song on his lips instead? Is he really that much better than me. Is that why you won’t leave this place?”
He shouted every word.
He didn’t spare Callum. He didn’t spare me.
I was shaking.
Callum’s face went cold. “Alpha heir, mind your words. Jade and I have nothing between us. It isn’t what you think.”
“Shut your mouth. Who asked you.” Ethan swung.
He was heavy. His fist landed on Callum’s jaw and Callum went down hard on the flagstones.
I dropped to my knees to get Callum up.
I shoved Ethan back with my free hand. “Have you lost your mind? This is not your wing! This is a sanctuary! Ethan Blackwell, if you go on like this, I will tell the Grand Luna every word of it.”
I had never once said his full name.
Not in front of him. Not in ten years.
The moment it left me, he flinched like I’d struck him. His eyes went wide.
“You’re protecting him. You’re speaking to me that way. For him. Well, well. I will kill him right here. Let’s see which wolf on this ridge dares to raise a hand against the Alpha heir.”
“Enough!”
The Grand Luna’s voice cut through the courtyard.
Ethan froze.
The old fury in her voice hit him harder than anything I could have said.
He had struck a retired Beta on Grand Luna’s own ground. He had shouted like a rogue in front of her sanctuary. There was only one answer for it.
She had him kneel.
In the courtyard. In front of everyone.
A candle would be lit. Until it burned out, he was not to rise.
An attendant set the candle in the sand of the courtyard basin.
Ethan knelt. His head was bowed.
The wind on the ridge was cold enough to leave welts on the skin. He didn’t move.
He shouted, once.
“Grand Luna. Bless the mating between Jade Whitmore and me. She was always meant to be mine. She’s my fated!”
Fated.
The word landed in the courtyard like a stone in still water.
He’d said it. He’d actually said it.
He knew nothing about that word. If Ethan and I had been fated, my inner wolf would have known him from the very first flame. She would have refused to walk out of his wing that night. She hadn’t. She had lain down and gone quiet, and she had been quiet ever since.
We had never been fated.
Inside the hall, I could hear him from where I stood. My head was starting to ache.
Whatever had come apart between us, all of it started with me. If the Grand Luna softened, if she gave him her word, my life would fold back into his. I felt the small ugly weight of that possibility settle in my chest.
Behind me, the Grand Luna pushed a small lacquered box across the low table.
“Time this short makes him think it’s nothing. He needs it longer. Something he’ll remember.”
I opened the box.
I saw what was inside.
I already knew what to do.
I walked out into the courtyard.
Ethan lifted his head when he heard my step. Something like hope broke across his face.
I didn’t look at him.
I walked to the sand basin.
I lifted the short candle from where the attendant had placed it.
Then I set down the longer one from the box.
Thick. Long. The kind that would burn through the whole afternoon and into the dark.
I planted it in the sand in front of the short one.
The exact way he had once set two candles in front of me.
He stared at it.
Then he stared at me.
Every drop of blood had left his face.