Alpha's Regret: The Seventh Time was Forever novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Mill

At her grandmother's mill Rosalind coughs blood and Maud says nothing of why the wolves followed. At dawn Dorian demands her back and a boy of ten says no, and the Alpha voice moves no one.

The MacAlpin mill stood on the river two miles outside the pack line, and every window in it was lit.

Maud MacAlpin was waiting on the porch with a lantern in one hand and a poker in the other.

She was small and seventy-two, with an iron-grey braid down her back.

Nothing had surprised her face in a long time.

She looked at the sled and at the forty wolves behind it with their candles.

Then she set the poker against the wall.

"Well," she said. "Bring her in before she freezes."

Perrin carried Rosalind up the steps and into the kitchen, and Maud pointed at the chair by the stove.

"Granny," Rosalind said. "I'm sorry. I should have come months ago."

"You couldn't walk months ago." Maud pressed two fingers to her wrist. "I came up to that bluff four times."

"What happened?"

"Your husband's guards sent me home at the gate every time. They said the Luna was resting."

"Nobody told me."

"No. I don't suppose they did."

Rosalind started to answer and coughed instead.

It came up from deep in her chest and kept coming. She grabbed the basin Maud held out and bent over it.

When the fit passed there was blood in the basin, bright and thin.

Maud looked at it for a long moment.

"That's the gas," she said. "It's still in your lungs, and five months in a shut-up room didn't help."

She wiped the basin out. "We're going to fix that."

"Can you?"

"I can try. River mint, steam, a cold window, and no more of that man's idea of rest."

She set a kettle on the stove.

Then she took down a jar of dried leaves with a faded MacAlpin label.

Rosalind watched her work.

Outside the window, the wolves from the pack house were spreading out through the yard.

Some of them lit a fire in the old mill pit. Others carried blankets and pots out of the barn.

A woman was already handing out bread from a sack.

"Granny, why did they come?" Rosalind said. "They left their houses. In the middle of the night."

Maud kept her back to her.

"They love you," she said. "You saved two hundred and twelve of them."

"That doesn't make forty wolves leave an Alpha."

"Drink your tea."

She put a mug in Rosalind's hands, and that was the end of the conversation.

Rosalind drank it. It was bitter and green, and in a few minutes her chest felt looser than it had in weeks.

She slept in her grandmother's bed under three quilts with the window open an inch.

When she woke, the sun was coming up grey over the river and somebody was shouting in the yard.

She knew the voice before she had her boots on.

She pulled her coat over her nightgown and went out on the porch.

Dorian's truck was parked crooked at the gate with the engine running.

He stood in the snow with the pack healer beside him, a thin grey woman with a medical bag.

Four of his guards stood behind them.

His eyes were red. He had not slept.

"There she is," he said. "Rosalind. The healer's here. Get in the truck."

"I'm staying."

"You're ill. You're out of your mind with it. Come home."

"I am home," she said. "This is MacAlpin land."

His eyes went across the yard.

Forty wolves had slept in the straw and the barn and around the fire. Now they stood up, one after another, and looked at him.

None of them lowered their eyes.

Dorian's face went hard.

"All of you," he said. "On your feet. Back up to the pack house. Now."

It was the Alpha voice, full strength. The glass in the porch window hummed with it.

The old stable man scratched his ear.

A woman went on handing out bread.

Perrin stood on the steps beside Rosalind and looked at Dorian with a face that did not know what to do.

Dorian drew a breath and said it again, louder.

"Back to the pack house. Every one of you. That is an order from your Alpha."

Nobody moved.

He had never in his life said a thing in that voice that the pack did not do.

A boy came out of the barn then, about ten years old, in a coat too big for him.

He had a half-eaten roll in his hand.

He walked to the middle of the yard and stopped in front of the Alpha.

"No," the boy said.

Dorian stared down at him.

"No, Alpha," the boy said again. "I'm staying with the Luna. She saved my sister."

A wolf near the fire laughed out loud, and then another.

Dorian turned toward his guards.

"Seize him."

The guards looked at the boy.

Then they looked at the forty wolves, and at the Luna on the porch.

They set their hands flat on their belts and stayed where they were.

The silence in the yard went on.

Rosalind did not say a word.

She watched her husband stand in the middle of it with his hand still half lifted.

Slowly his hand came down to his side, and not one wolf in the yard had stepped toward him.

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