Chapter 13: The Road Home

Alexander had his truck keys in his fist before I finished reading the note twice.

"Sit down," I said.

"He took the only proof. I'm driving to Cedar Fork to take it back."

"You'd be breaking into his lodge. Robbing an Alpha on his own ground is a challenge by law, and he gets to name the weapons."

He stopped in the barn doorway with his back to me.

"Then what do I do with my hands?"

"Nothing for six days."

Dora stood with the sewing box against her chest, the bottle gone from it.

"He knew," she said. "Twenty years he's known exactly where it was."

"He needed it to stay hidden until he could use it," I said. "You were the safest place for it. You were the one person who'd never say anything."

She flinched, and I did not take it back.

I was still deciding whether I wanted to, when a horn sounded at the gate.

Three trucks had stopped on the road.

Nine women got out of them, and I knew every one.

I had delivered their babies, and a few of them I had delivered when they were babies themselves.

The oldest one walked up the drive carrying a brown leather satchel with my father's initials burned into the flap.

It was my midwife's bag, the one I had left hanging on the clinic door the night I walked out.

"Catriona," she said, and held it out with both hands.

"Where did you get that?"

"We broke the lock." Her chin shook. "Braden had the clinic shut. He told every wolf in Cedar Fork not to go north for you."

"Then why are you here?"

"Four of us are due before the Moot. And the youngest of us has been in labor since noon, and her baby is coming feet first."

She said it fast, with her eyes on mine.

"The healer wants to cut her open. She's screaming, Catriona. We didn't know who else to ask."

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