I Saw My Alpha Mate's Betrayal, So I Changed Fate novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Strays

Faye meets the lone wolves who live on the ridge and none of them will leave; a surveyor arrives with a deed handing the ridge to the pack, signed with her name.

I held the picture out to Abel without a word.

He took it by the edges, the way Gran used to.

He looked at it for a long time.

Then he looked down the slope at the four dark cabins, and back at the photo.

"When?"

"Saturday night. Same time as now."

"Your camera does three days."

I stared at him.

Nobody outside our family knew that. Gran made us swear it before we could tie our shoes.

"She told you," I said.

"She showed me."

He leaned on the rail beside me and handed the photo back.

"The week I came up here, she took my picture on this catwalk. Three days on, I was sitting right here, eating her chili."

"So?"

"So I was planning to be in Idaho by then. I had my bag packed."

"What happened?"

"She made chili."

I laughed. It came out wet and wrong, but it was a laugh.

He didn't ask whether I was sure about the jacket.

He didn't ask whether I was hysterical, or jealous, or tired.

He said, "Then we'd better get them off the ridge," and went in to put the coffee on.

Nobody got off the ridge.

At six in the morning, someone banged a frying pan with a spoon right under the catwalk.

I came down the stairs in yesterday's clothes and found the whole crew at a plank table in front of the cabins.

A wide gray-haired woman in an apron flipped pancakes on a griddle the size of a car door.

Each pancake was the size of a hubcap.

Two women in their late twenties sat on the bench, both sunburned, both talking at once.

An old man with a white beard sat at the end, cleaning a trap with a rag.

"Abel brought a girl home," the first sister said.

"Abel's never brought anything home but a porcupine," said the other.

"And that porcupine had better manners than him."

"Sit," the cook told me, and put a plate in front of me before I could argue.

"I'm Faye," I said.

"We know who you are, honey. You've got her eyes."

The old trapper looked at me once over his trap, then passed me the syrup.

I ate half a pancake before I could make myself say it.

"There's going to be a fire Saturday night. All of this burns."

The griddle hissed.

Nobody laughed.

I laid the photo on the table, and they passed it hand to hand.

The sisters stopped talking for the first time all morning.

"Damien's doing?" asked the cook.

"My brother's holding the torch. But yes."

"Then you'd better go down and stay down, sweetheart."

"Me? You're the ones who need to leave."

The cook flipped another hubcap.

"My own pack set my suitcase on the road the week my husband died. Your Gran picked it up."

"I'm not leaving her ridge to a boy with a torch."

"Where would we go?" the older sister said. "The valley won't sell us a loaf of bread without a lecture."

"Last time I went to the hardware store, they called the Alpha on me," the younger one said. "I was buying a hinge."

"It was a very suspicious hinge."

They grinned at each other.

I turned to the old trapper.

He set the trap down.

"No," he said, and picked it back up.

Abel came down the stairs with two mugs and handed me one.

"I told you," he said.

"You didn't tell me anything."

"I told you nobody leaves. In my head."

"That doesn't count."

"It counted to me."

The sisters made a low ooh sound in perfect harmony.

He ignored them so completely it was a talent.

I had just drunk the first scalding swallow when a white pickup came grinding up the last switchback.

It parked behind my truck.

A man in an orange safety vest got out with a bundle of wooden stakes under one arm.

A roll of pink flagging tape hung on his wrist.

He didn't look at any of us.

He pounded a stake into the dirt beside the first cabin and tied a strip of pink tape around it.

Abel stood up.

So did the cook, still holding her spatula.

"Can I help you?" I called.

"Timber cruise," the man said. "Marking the cut lines."

"On whose land?"

"Silverfir Pack's."

"This is my land."

He sighed.

He went back to his truck and came over with a clipboard.

"Ma'am, the buyer closes once the ridge is clear. I just need the boundaries."

"What buyer?"

"Logging outfit out of Missoula. Four million for the stumpage. Your Alpha sold it fair and square."

He flipped to a photocopied page and held it out.

It was a transfer deed.

Signal Ridge, all of it, the lookout and the cabins and every tree, conveyed to the Silverfir Pack under Alpha Damien Stroud.

Dated June 30.

Three weeks ago, I'd been in town that day picking up Damien's dry cleaning.

At the bottom, on the line marked Grantor, was my name.

Faye Dacre, in looping blue ink.

I'd been signing that name since I was six.

I always ran the bar of my F straight through the tail of the y, one quick stroke, like Gran taught me.

This bar stopped short.

Neat and round and careful.

It was my name, and it wasn't my hand.

And I knew exactly whose it was.

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