Half Were Mine novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Gold Eyes

Bronwyn reports to the Alpha at dawn, her wolf recognizes him on sight, and he drops his mug, says her first name and walks out of his own office.

Cormac lived in two rooms above the patrol house, with a couch that sagged in the middle and a fridge that held beer and mustard.

I took the couch.

He stood over me at ten o'clock with a plate of scrambled eggs and a face that said he had rehearsed something.

"Eat."

"Why did you put me on the Alpha's detail?"

"Because it's the best posting in the pack. Better hours, better pay. You've been stuck on the southern boundary for four years."

"Rhett wrote the rosters."

"I know he did."

He said it flat and fast, and he wouldn't look up.

"Cormac. What did you mean on the phone? The wolf you've had picked out for years."

"I meant nothing."

"You said he's been waiting."

"I said a lot of things. I was happy." He pushed the plate into my hands. "Go to bed, Bronwyn. You report at six, and the Alpha does not like late."

"Is that the wolf you picked? The Alpha?"

My brother laughed so loud the couch springs rattled.

"The Alpha doesn't date. He's thirty-five and he sleeps in his office. Eat your eggs."

He was lying about something. I could tell by his ears, which went red whenever he lied, and always had.

But I was too tired to chase it.

I slept four hours, and at five forty-five I was standing at the doors of the pack hall in my tactical gear, with my braid done tight.

A night guard walked me down a long corridor of dark wood, past the war room and the records office, to a door at the end.

The nameplate said: Alpha.

I knocked.

"Come in."

The voice was low and even, and something in my chest turned over before I had even opened the door.

The office was bigger than I expected, with a stone fireplace and a long table covered in maps.

A man stood at the window with his back to me, holding a mug.

He was tall. His shoulders filled the frame, and his dark hair had gone grey at the temples.

"Harlan, reporting for the morning detail," I said. "Sir."

He turned around.

I had seen photographs of Torsten Redmond. I had seen him at a distance at big pack events, always behind a crowd, always leaving early.

I had never been in a room with him alone.

His eyes were dark green.

And then they weren't.

Gold came up through them, and my wolf, who had been quiet and sullen for four years, stood up inside me and went absolutely still.

Then she went wild.

Every part of me knew his scent. Pine smoke and cold water and something under it that made my knees go loose, and I had never smelled it before in my life.

I knew it anyway.

I had known it all along.

I put my hand on the doorframe.

"Alpha," I said, and it came out a whisper.

The mug in his hand was shaking.

Coffee ran over his knuckles, and he didn't seem to feel it.

"Bronwyn," he said.

Not Harlan. Not the surname he used on the rosters.

He said my first name low and slow, and it sounded well practiced.

Then the mug slipped out of his fingers and hit the stone floor and broke in three pieces.

Neither of us looked at it.

"You know who I am," I said. It was barely a question.

"Yes."

"I think I know you."

He closed his eyes.

His hands went into fists at his sides, and I saw the muscles in his jaw work.

"Excuse me," Torsten Redmond said, very politely.

And he walked past me, out of his own office, and shut the door behind him.

I stood alone in the middle of the Alpha's room with coffee spreading over the floor and my wolf howling inside my ribs.

I had left one man yesterday.

I had not come here to feel this.

I looked down at the broken mug and at my own hand, which was still shaking.

On the desk behind me, in a silver frame, was a photograph I had never seen.

A girl of nineteen at a boundary fire, laughing with her head thrown back.

It was me.

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