My Pack Called Me Empty, So the Coldest Alpha Claimed Me Out Loud novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Her Door

Veikko's Alpha voice slides off her, she tells his wolves what he is, and Reino waits on the road with a question about the full moon.

"I'm not coming home," I said.

My father got the six wolves lined up in front of the trucks, their breath steaming in the headlights.

He wore his silver Beta's pin even here.

Eskil stood behind my left shoulder with a hammer in his hand and said nothing.

"You're twenty-four and unmated, and I'm your father," Veikko said. "A Beta has claim over an unmated daughter under the pack's law. You know it, and you've no business out here alone with him."

"I'm not alone. Leena's behind the pines."

"Hi," Leena called from the dark.

Veikko ignored her.

"Maija," he said, and his voice dropped into the Beta's register, heavy and pressing. "Come here."

Every wolf on the gravel leaned toward him.

Two of the younger ones actually took a step.

I stood on my own doorstep and felt a man shouting at me in a low voice.

It slid off me.

"No," I said.

Veikko's mouth opened.

He tried it again, harder, with the whole weight of his chest behind it.

"Maija. Come."

I didn't move.

The wolf at his shoulder, a big gray man I'd known since I was ten, shook his head.

"She didn't even blink," he muttered.

"She never does," another one said quietly.

I looked at my father.

He had never tried it on me in front of anyone before.

Nine years of that voice had gone through me and left no mark, and he had known that, and I think it was one more thing he could not forgive me.

"I'll tell you what I'm going to do," I said. "I'm going to say it once, and your wolves can listen."

Eskil's hand touched the small of my back, very briefly.

"Do you want me to stop this?" he asked, low.

"Not yet," I said.

"Say when."

"I will."

I turned back to the trucks.

I said it once, and I said it plainly.

"When I was fifteen and my wolf didn't come, he moved my chair from the family table to the kitchen bench," I said. "He said it was so I'd be near the work."

"When I turned eighteen there was no Naming-day feast, because he said there was nothing to name," I said.

"At every Gathering since, I have worn a gray apron he bought for me, and he has introduced me to visiting packs as the girl who carries."

I kept going.

"My mother was the pack healer. She cut her own hands open for every wolf in this territory. When she was dying, he was the one who said I should stop crying in the sickroom, because it wasn't dignified for a Beta's daughter."

"He has never once come to her grave with me."

Nobody on the gravel was looking at my father anymore.

A couple of the wolves were looking at their boots.

"This is my land," I said. "It's my mother's cabin and I have papers. I'd like him off it."

"Alpha," I said, without turning around. "Now."

Eskil moved up beside me.

He didn't raise his voice.

He didn't have to.

"Veikko," he said. "Off the point."

The Alpha voice rolled over that gravel with all its cold weight.

Six wolves stepped back at once.

My father went white to the lips, because it was a command from his own Alpha, and he had to obey it in front of his men.

"You're making a fool of this pack," he said, hoarse, to me.

"I'm not doing it. You are."

"He'll use you up and drop you. He'll tire of the novelty, and then who's going to want you? You'll have nothing."

"Then he'll have kept me warmer than you did," I said. "Goodnight."

I shut the door.

I leaned against it with my heart going hard and listened to the trucks back out, one by one.

When the last engine had faded I opened the door again.

Eskil was still standing on my step with the hammer in his hand.

"You said when," he said.

"I did."

"I would have stopped it anywhere."

"I know," I said. "But I needed to say it first."

He nodded slowly.

"Thank you for letting me help."

"Don't thank me yet. Your patch on my roof is crooked."

For the first time in my life, I saw the corner of Eskil Lehto's mouth move.

It was gone before I could be sure.

"Goodnight, Maija."

"Goodnight, Alpha."

I watched his taillights until they vanished into the pines.

Then I went inside and sat on my mother's bed and shook until the stove burned down.

In the morning, I took the road to the Longhouse to find Leena and tell her everything.

The road ran beside the river, and where it crossed the Tamarack line a big pickup sat parked in the snow with its engine off.

A man in a fur-collared coat leaned against the fender, holding a steel thermos.

"Miss Hakala," Reino Kettunen said, smiling. "I thought you might walk this way."

"I'm in a hurry."

"Won't take a minute. You seem like a clever girl, and I'd like you to hear a thing before you give up your whole life to him."

He unscrewed the thermos and poured himself a cup.

"Ask your Alpha," he said, "why he hasn't run on a full moon in three years."

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