Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87502 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87502 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
As strange as it might seem, I longed to get pregnant, despite how distasteful I found sex. I would watch the young mothers of the Pack holding their babies and my own arms felt so empty I wanted to weep.
I did weep often, alone in my room at night. Except for the nights of my Heat Cycle, I didn’t sleep with Carter. He said I “bothered him.” He’d been used to sleeping alone long before he acquired me as his wife—he wasn’t about to change for the foolish young girl he’d married.
Not that I was a girl anymore.
I opened my eyes and looked down into the casket again. That ugly, wrinkled old man had stolen twenty years of my life. I was forty now and while I still had curves in the right places, I could see faint lines around the corners of my eyes and mouth. There were a few silver strands in my long, dark hair as well. Nothing too dramatic—I could pluck them out easily enough. But there always seemed to be more later.
“Ah, you must be missing him so much. Poor lass.”
I jerked my head up and saw the Pack Chaplain, Father MacKaity, standing at my side.
Quickly, I lowered my head, hiding my tearless eyes behind the black mourning veil I was wearing.
“Yes, Father,” I said softly. I had spent most of my life pretending to be a good and dutiful wife—I could pretend a little more now. If the Pack and the surrounding town knew how I really felt about Carter’s death, they would be shocked and scandalized.
“Such a good husband he was to you, my girl,” Father MacKaity said solemnly. “Always making sure you were well fed and dressed in the finest clothes—no one could doubt you were the wife of the Pack Leader when they saw you.”
No, of course not—Carter always kept up appearances, I almost said. I kept the words behind my teeth, though. It wouldn’t do to let people know that my whole marriage had been nothing but a well-rehearsed performance and that even now I was still performing.
Performing grief, performing the part of the young widow—well, youngish—left behind and grieving after her dear husband is taken far too soon.
Personally, it wouldn’t have bothered me if Carter had decided to shuffle off this mortal coil a good ten years earlier—at least then I might have had a bit of my youth left. If that sounds cold, well I’m sorry—as I said, I lived through a cold, abusive marriage.
Out in public, he would sometimes hold my hand. And of course, during my Heat Cycle he bred me, whether I wanted him to or not. Other than those times, my husband never touched me. I used to watch the other wives with their husbands and yearn to be touched and held and loved. I saw the way the men held their mates close—the casual drape of an arm around her shoulders…a kiss on the cheek, or the mouth…the many times I saw a happy couple sneak off into the shadows together because her Heat Cycle was getting to be too much and her husband had to breed her…
I never had any of that. The years when I should have been wed to a warm, loving man who would wrap me in his arms and love me were behind me now. Now I was nothing but a grieving widow and since I had been married to the Pack Leader, I was expected to stay that way the rest of my life.
There was even a law about it in my Pack—The Moon Widow, as the wife of the dead Pack Leader is called—is not allowed to marry again if she’s over a certain age. She must spend the rest of her life honoring her husband’s memory and bearing witness to his greatness. The only exception is if the next Pack Leader wants to marry her. But that wasn’t considered likely, especially at my time of life.
If I had been even a little younger, they might have let me remarry. But I was past forty now—too old to have any urgent Heat Cycles. Too old to be given as a wife to another Pack Alpha. Not that any of them would want a used-up Omega like me—even if I did have the Royal Ringed Eyes. I still bore my late husband’s crest tattooed on my upper right arm and his was the only Mark I would ever wear.
“It’s a pity you never could bear him any sons.” There was a hint of reproach in Father MacKaity’s mellow tenor voice, as though I had withheld the sons on purpose. “I know how desperately he wanted an heir, but alas, now the Pack will have to go through the Alpha Challenge and we’ll likely lose at least two or three good, strong Alphas in the fights.”