I Saw My Alpha Mate's Betrayal, So I Changed Fate novel · Chapter 20 of 32

Chapter 20: Lowell

I went down that afternoon.

Abel drove me as far as the bottom of the ridge road and waited in the truck by the river.

He couldn't come into the valley houses, and I didn't want him to.

The house I grew up in looked exactly the same.

Blue shutters, the porch swing, my mother's tomato plants in their wire cages.

The seating chart for the bonding was still on the coffee table, under a stack of mail.

Nobody had moved it in seven weeks.

My father met me in the front hall.

He looked older. His good elder's jacket hung on the hook behind him.

"Your mother says she went up there," he said.

"She did."

"She shouldn't have."

"She ate a pancake. It was very dangerous."

His mouth went tight.

"He's upstairs. Don't upset him."

"He asked for me, Dad. Not you."

I went past him up the stairs.

Lowell's room still had the pennants on the wall and the trophy shelf from high school football.

The red jacket hung on the back of the door.

It smelled like sweat and sickness in there, and something sweet and wrong underneath.

My brother lay on top of the covers in a T-shirt and sweatpants, his face flushed and shiny.

His hands rested on two pillows beside him, wrapped in fresh gauze to the wrist.

Above the gauze, angry red lines ran up the inside of both arms.

His eyes opened when I came in.

"Fay-Fay," he said, and his voice cracked like he was seven.

I pulled the desk chair to the bed and sat.

"You've got a fever of a hundred and three, and red streaks going up to your elbows," I said. "Why aren't you in Missoula?"

"I keep thinking if I go in, I don't come out."

"That's what happens if you don't go in, genius."

He laughed and then winced.

We sat there.

Out the window, I could see the roof of Sophie's house next door, and the tire swing we'd all fallen off.

"I saw the paper," he said. "From the county. The sign-out sheet."

"Everybody's going to see it."

"I signed my own name." He laughed again, awful. "I didn't even think. I just signed it, like a library book."

His eyes filled up.

"Faye. I didn't know about the den. I swear I didn't."

"Damien said the grove would be fine. He said the wind would go the other way."

"You didn't ask."

"No."

"You lit four houses with people's whole lives inside. You didn't ask about that either."

He turned his face away into the pillow.

"I need you to say it's okay," he whispered.

"I can't."

"Please."

"It's not mine to say, Lowell."

"Who else is there?"

"The cook," I said. "She lost eleven years in that cabin."

"The sisters. The trapper. The mothers in the den. Abel, who sat in silver wire because you lied."

He made a sound.

I didn't stop.

"You don't get it from me in your bedroom. You don't get it in a bedroom at all."

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