Too Old for My Alpha, Worth the Wait for His Rival novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Severed

The bond break puts Catriona in a fever at Dora's cabin; Alexander Ashdown comes through the night and holds her wrist until it breaks. Then the pack's notice says her younger daughter must stay.

By midnight I was on Dora's couch with a fever that made the ceiling slide sideways.

Dora kept changing the cold cloth on my forehead and would not meet my eyes for longer than a second.

Eliza sat on the floor beside me with her back against the cushions and my hand in both of hers.

"How long does a severing last?" Eliza asked.

"Three days for a young wolf," Dora said. "A week for an older one."

"Mine has been asleep for twenty years," I said. "Nobody wrote a rule for that."

Dora looked down at her hands and began folding the cloth into smaller and smaller squares.

I noticed it, and then the fever took the thought away.

My teeth ached.

My fingers kept curling, and the nails were thick and wrong.

Every sound in the cabin was too loud: the kettle ticking, the wind in the stovepipe, Eliza's pulse.

The wolf inside me paced, and every time she hit the edge of me, I felt it in my spine.

"Mom," Eliza said. "Your eyes."

I caught my reflection in the dark window.

My eyes were gold.

I tried to sit up, and the room spun, and my wolf lunged for the door.

Headlights swept across the front curtains.

A truck engine cut out, and a boot hit the porch.

Dora went to the door and spoke low to someone outside.

Then she turned around.

"Alexander Ashdown is here," she said. "He's been driving for two hours."

"No," I said.

"An Alpha's hand at the wrist can settle a severing wolf," Dora said. "Every healer knows it."

"I'll manage."

The wolf hit the edge of me again, and I bit through my lip.

Eliza stood up.

"Mom, you can't shift in Dora's kitchen. Let him in."

I said nothing, which was how I said yes.

Alexander came in with the cold on his coat and stopped three steps from the couch.

He was taller than I remembered from the Gathering, grey in his beard now, and he did not look at the cabin or at Dora.

He looked only at me.

"Catriona," he said. "Give me your wrist."

I held it out, because the wolf wanted it more than I wanted to refuse.

He crossed the floor in two strides, knelt, and wrapped his hand around my wrist.

His palm was hot and dry.

The wolf went still.

All at once the fever went out of me.

The ceiling stopped moving.

My heartbeat slowed to match something steady, and it took me a moment to realize the steady thing was his.

I knew his scent.

I had known it from the lot, from the dark, from the first second.

My wolf did not pace anymore.

She sat down, leaned toward him, and waited.

"Breathe," Alexander said quietly. "That's all. Breathe."

I breathed.

I let him hold me for as long as it took to be sure I could stand without the walls shaking.

Then I pulled my wrist out of his hand.

"Why did you come?" I said.

"Braden drove north to my door himself," Alexander said. "He said, come and witness something. I came to see what it was."

"And you stood by the door and watched."

"I did." He did not look away. "I'm sorry I stayed there. I would have been in the lot the minute you asked."

"I didn't ask."

"No," he said. "You said thank you and put your ring in the cake."

Eliza made a small noise that might have been a laugh.

I stood.

My legs held.

"You've done what you came for," I said. "Thank you. Please go."

He nodded once and rose.

At the door he set a card on Dora's table, white, with a phone number and one line of handwriting.

Ash Mountain is two hours north. The road is open at my end.

Then he was gone, and his truck backed out under the pines.

I picked up the card and read it twice.

Dora had her back to me, rinsing a cup that was already clean.

"Dora," I said. "Is something wrong?"

"You're burning up still," she said, too fast. "Lie down."

I did, because my legs were done.

I slept until grey light came through the curtains and somebody pounded on the cabin door.

It was Braden's Beta.

He did not come in.

He held out a sheet of heavy paper with the pack seal at the top, and Dora took it from him with two fingers.

She read it, and her face went white.

"What?" I said.

She handed it to me.

By pack law, a cast-off Luna leaves Cedar Fork territory by the next new moon, carrying only what she can carry.

A pup under eighteen stays with the pack and its Alpha.

At the bottom, in Braden's heavy hand, was my younger daughter's name.

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