Chapter 13: The Gate

Nobody stopped us on the way out of the ballroom.

Darek kept one hand at my back, and the wolves of both packs moved out of our path.

Behind us, Imogen's father was already shouting for his wolves, and nobody answered him.

I did not look at Jarrett again.

I did not need to.

I could feel him at the far end of the thread in my chest, pulling.

We drove for an hour with the radio off.

When the Ironwood gate came up in the headlights, a truck was parked across the road.

Jarrett stood in front of it in his wedding trousers, with his jacket gone and his tie hanging open.

He had beaten us there.

Darek stopped ten feet short of him and killed the engine.

"Faye," Jarrett said through the glass. "Let me talk to you."

"She hasn't asked to talk to you," Darek said.

I rolled my window down.

"You said it in front of two packs," I said. "You've said it. Go home."

"I'm not leaving."

"Then stand there."

I rolled the window up.

Darek drove around the bumper, through the gate, and stopped beside the two sentries.

"Brandis stands on the road," he said to them. "He doesn't cross the line, and nobody feeds him or answers him."

"For how long, Alpha?"

"Until he gets tired of it."

In the mirror, Jarrett was still standing in the dust with his hands at his sides.

He did not move once.

Darek walked me across the yard to the small house behind the hall that he had given me.

He stopped on the porch step and did not come in.

"You're thinking," he said.

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