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)
“Ah, I can see that you miss him—please take this, lass.” Father MacKaity—clearly mistaking my sudden emotion for grief—pressed a clean white handkerchief into my hand.
“Thank you, Father.” I took it with a nod and pretended to dab at my eyes. I was glad that I had chosen to wear a veil. No one could see my face under the black lace, so I was free to let my expressions show what I felt. Though to be honest, I’d spent so many years with a pleasant smile frozen on my face, I wasn’t even sure my face could show true emotion anymore.
It had showed plenty when we’d first been married but Carter used to lock me in my room when my face twisted into what he considered “inappropriate” expressions when we were out in the town. So I learned to show nothing—to feel nothing.
Which was why I felt nothing now as I stared down at his corpse—or so I told myself. I felt nothing as I stared at the man who had robbed me of the best years of my life, who had left me cold and lonely for the entire time we’d been together. I might have gotten over the gap in our ages if he had been kind to me—if he’d cared even a little. I was so young and so starved for affection when I first came to him—I had just wanted someone to love me…to hold me…
“Well, well—sorry the old boy is gone.”
This new voice came from my right. Father MacKaity had wandered off to speak to other grieving Pack members. I jerked my head up and saw Harris Murdoch looking speculatively at the corpse. He didn’t sound sorry that Carter was gone—no sorrier than I was, anyway. As always, he brought a strong smell of sour beer, stale body odor, and cigarettes with him that made my nose want to shrivel in disgust.
“He was a good husband,” I said, because that is what a grieving widow is supposed to say.
“Good enough to you, anyway—I hear he left you everything, even though you never gave him any pups.” He ran a hand over his balding head, eyeing me speculatively.
“I…tried my best,” I faltered, hating him for bringing up my shortcomings again. Would no one in the Pack ever let me forget my barren womb? Did no one care or understand how much it hurt—how I still mourned my empty arms and the fact that I would never hold a baby of my own?
“Anyway, the old boy was loaded, wasn’t he?” Harris looked at the heavy golden ring on Carter’s hand with its four-carat diamond star shining above the crescent moon and the wolf’s head. “Left you quite a tidy little fortune plus Wolverton Manor.”
I said nothing to this—it wasn’t my place to say. It was true I was quite a wealthy widow, but it wasn’t as though I would be allowed to spend any of that wealth on travel the way I wanted to. To leave the site of my husband’s grave would be a scandal. No, I would be stuck here as Mistress Vivienne of Wolverton Manor with the official title of, “The Moon Widow” all the rest of my days.
Even in death, Carter had me trapped.
“You know, you’re not a bad looking woman, despite being past your prime,” Harris went on, surprising me out of my dull gray thoughts. “I might think about taking you on as a mate after I win the Alpha Challenge. It’s a damn shame to let all that wealth go to waste on a woman.”
He turned his sharp gray eyes on me, and I was glad all over again that I was wearing a veil. I couldn’t have hidden the loathing on my face otherwise.
If there was any male in the Pack I wanted to be with less than I’d wanted Carter, it was the ignorant, stinking bully standing beside me. Especially since he didn’t even try to hide the fact that he’d only be marrying me for the money and property my late husband had left me.
“Could be that you’re not as barren as we all thought, ya know,” he went on, clearly oblivious to my hatred and disgust. “Could be you just need a younger, stronger Alpha breeding you.” He looked me up and down again, his eyes lingering on my breasts and legs. “I wouldn’t mind that—wouldn’t mind it at all.”
I wanted to turn on him and snarl that I’d rather die than marry him and how dare he speak about breeding me right in front of my dead husband’s coffin? But coward that I was, I didn’t dare. If Harris really did win the Alpha Challenge and became Pack Leader, I wouldn’t be able to say no to him. If he decided he wanted to marry me to inherit all my wealth, he could and would. No one would stop him.