Chapter 13: The Bond Line

Lucan was still on his knees at dawn.

Emmett stood at the kitchen window with two mugs of coffee and gave me one.

"Six hours," he said. "He hasn't moved. I put a blanket on the step, and he didn't touch it."

"I told him to go."

"You did." He drank. "He heard something different."

I took my coffee out into the cold.

Frost had come down in the night, and Lucan's good shirt was stiff with it.

His lips had gone grey.

I stood over him and didn't touch him.

"Get up."

"I'm not asking you for anything," he said. His voice was a rasp. "I came to say one thing, and then I'll go."

"Say it."

"The Ceremony is Saturday. Be there."

"I told Camille I'd stand witness."

"Then watch me." He looked up at last. "I'm going to tell them the truth in front of all of them."

"Your father will bury you."

"He can try."

He got one foot under him, and his knee gave out.

Emmett caught him under the arm before I could decide whether to.

"Truck's at the stones," Emmett said, hauling him upright. "Drive home, Sterne. Slowly."

Lucan went.

He did not look back, and I was ashamed of how badly I wanted him to.

On Saturday the moon came up fat and white over the pack house hill.

Three hundred wolves stood in a ring of old grey stones, and every one of them had dressed for a wedding.

I stood with the witnesses on the east side, in a green dress Kerensa had forced on me, with her fingers locked in mine.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Alpha's Regret: Losing his True Mate from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.