Alpha's Regret: The Luna He Left Behind novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Hollow Creek

Freya's mother's cabin has steps she can't climb, and the porch rail snaps in her hand. Hoyt says he saw her pull the Alpha out of the river.

It took five unpacked wolves and a length of chain to pull the van out of the mud.

Trudy sat behind the wheel and gave orders nobody followed.

"Hoyt Rudd," the big man said to me, once the wheels were on gravel. "That's my name. I'd shake your hand, but I'm wet to the elbows."

"Freya Dahl," I said. "You already know that."

"I know a lot of things, Luna."

"Don't call me that. I'm not anyone's Luna as of last night."

"Funny," Hoyt said. "My camp hasn't been told."

He walked ahead of the van the rest of the way up the creek road, one hand on the hood.

The camp lay on the flat ground below the cabin.

There were eight households, some in trailers and some in tarp-roofed sheds, with smoke going up from every stovepipe.

The unpacked wolves were the ones no pack would take, the ones who had broken a rule or lost an Alpha or simply been unlucky.

Last winter the camp's food had run out in January.

Luther Ellerby had said the camp was not Redwater's business.

I had sent forty sacks of flour and a truckload of wool blankets from the winter stores anyway, signed with my own name.

I had not thought about it since.

"We never forgot it," Hoyt said when I looked at the smoke. "Somebody kept your mother's roof on, too."

"That was you?"

"That was all of us. Don't make a speech."

My mother's cabin sat above the creek on a rise, with a porch and four wooden steps.

The roof was whole. The windows were clean.

Nobody had told me that either.

Trudy parked the van and got out. She stood looking up at the cabin with her hands on her hips.

"We need a ramp," she said. "I'll get a plank. We'll build it tomorrow."

"Tomorrow's fine."

"I can carry you up."

"No, you can't," I said. "I'm doing it."

The wheels of my chair sank into the mud at the bottom of the stairs.

I set the brakes, took hold of the handrail, and swung myself out of the seat.

My legs hung under me, and I could feel them only dimly.

I got my elbow over the second step and my chin onto the third.

On the fourth, my hand slipped on the wet wood and I went down on my side.

The rain beat on my back.

Behind me, I heard Trudy take a step.

"Don't," I said.

She stopped.

I lay there with my cheek against my mother's porch boards and breathed.

I had been Luna of Redwater for two years. I had carried sacks of grain on my own back.

Nobody was watching me now except the rain and the people I had once sent flour to.

I put my right hand on the rail and pulled.

The rail came away from the post with a crack.

I was left holding six feet of pine, with two rusted nails still in the end.

The porch was quiet.

Trudy said, very carefully, "Did you just rip that off?"

"It's rotten."

"Freya."

"It's old. It's very old."

Hoyt walked up the steps, took the broken end from my hand, and ran his thumb along the grain.

He turned the rail toward the lamplight so we could see it.

The pine was pale and clean, solid all the way through.

"It isn't rotten," he said.

I looked at my hand. It wasn't shaking.

"Help me up," I said.

Hoyt lifted me by the elbow and sat me on the top step. I let him.

Trudy came and sat beside me and put her wet arm around my shoulders.

"Okay," she said. "So that's a thing."

"Don't say anything to anyone."

"I'm going to put a tarp on that rail and think about it for a month."

I laughed, and it came out cracked.

Inside, there was a stove and a stack of split wood and a quilt on the bed that I recognized.

My mother had stitched it the winter before she died.

Someone had washed it.

By eight o'clock, half the camp had come through the door with pots and bowls, and nobody left until the stew was gone.

A little girl sat on the arm of my chair and asked if it was loud when it rolled.

Nobody asked what had happened to me.

At ten, the cabin emptied out. Trudy fell asleep across the foot of the bed with her boots on.

Hoyt stayed in the doorway with his hat in his hands.

"I need to say something," he said, "and I want you to hear all of it before you throw something at me."

"I'm not throwing anything at anyone tonight."

"Last month, the day of the rogue attack." He turned the hat once. "I was on the ridge above the ford, watching your people run."

I held very still.

"I saw you go into the river after your Alpha. I saw you get his head up out of the water and haul him to the bank, with silver in your arm."

"Hoyt."

"I saw the rogues throw you down the rock." His voice went rough. "I saw the Beta come down afterward and stand over the Alpha and let the whole pack see him do it."

The stove ticked.

"You pulled him out of that river," Hoyt said. "He doesn't know that, does he?"

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