Fated to My Homeless Billionaire Alpha novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Rite

By the night of the full moon, the silver chain had worn a red ring into my wrist.

I had not set it down once.

I had slept with it wrapped around my fist, and Mathias had slept with his hand over mine.

Now the Council stood at the bottom of the lodge drive in the dusk, and the pack waited in two long lines behind them.

"The vow has held," the old man in the bolo tie said. "The Rite begins."

The pack had voted Alden out of the Beta's seat eight days ago, but he was still a wolf of the Three Rivers.

He was the first to step forward.

The Allegheny ran black and fast at the foot of the lodge's lower field.

He stood at the bank with his hands behind his back, in the same charcoal overcoat he had worn into my shop.

"Miss Halvorsen," he said. "The Alpha turns thirty tonight."

"If the bite fails, if the wolf takes him, would you stay with the animal?"

I looked at the water.

"Yes," I said.

"You would stay with a beast that did not know your name?"

"Yes. I'd sit in a cage with him and sing to him if I had to."

"I don't have a better answer than that, and I don't want one."

Alden watched my face for a long time.

Something in his own face tried to move, and he held it still.

"The answer is true," the bolo-tie man said. "Next."

The second station was the Monongahela, at the edge of the east wood.

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