The Alpha King's Heart novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Dog Crate

I did not wait for the driver to open the door.

The King took the wheel himself, and the black car went down the hill so fast that I braced both hands on the dash.

"Where would he take a child?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"Think."

"The pack house," I said. "The old union hall. They keep the cage in the yard."

I had walked past that cage every day for five years.

Humans were put in it for being out after curfew.

I had never once looked inside.

The King drove through two red lights and one gate that was still closing.

I forced myself to breathe slow and steady, trying to keep my head clear.

The union hall sat behind a chain-link fence, with floodlights on all four corners.

Thirty wolves stood in the yard in a half circle.

At the center of the half circle was a dog crate.

My brother was inside it, on his knees, with both hands wrapped around the bars.

He was not crying.

That was the worst part.

He was staring at the ground in front of him, absolutely silent, the way I had taught him to when we were small and the wolves came to our door.

"Toby," I said.

I was out of the car before it stopped.

Two warriors stepped in front of me.

The King stepped out behind me, and they went down on one knee at once.

"Open the cage," he said.

His voice was not loud.

Strake came strolling out of the hall with a drink in his hand and my mother's blood on his knuckles.

I saw it, and everything in my head went white.

"My King," Strake said. "You've come all this way for a barking brat."

"Open the cage, Alpha Strake."

"I thought you wanted me to explain myself tonight at the Keep. I was on my way. I stopped to give the boy a lesson in manners first."

"Where is his mother?"

"Resting," Strake said. "She tried to stop my men at the door, and she had a fall."

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