My Alpha Told Me to Stop Needing Him. So I Disappeared novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Gala

Corbin's POV

The Full Moon Gala had been held in Redwood's great hall for ninety years, and I had never once dreaded it.

I stood at the top of the stairs in my black suit and watched four hundred wolves look at the empty place beside me.

Nobody said her name.

It was louder than if they had.

Tiffany had hung the lanterns and ordered the flowers, and I had let her, because I could not lift my own hands to do it.

"You look wonderful," she said, adjusting my tie.

"I look like a man who hasn't eaten."

"Then eat." She pushed a plate at me. "You have to be strong tonight."

I couldn't swallow.

Tobias had come to me at noon with his jaw set and told me what Jonah once said, and where he had been that morning, and whose house he had crossed the river to reach.

I wanted to throw him through a wall.

Then I wanted to ask him what the words meant.

I didn't have time.

At nine, the doors opened and the Black Pine Alpha walked in with six of his wolves, still in boots from the road.

He was a thick, grizzled man of fifty, and he looked around the hall slowly.

"MacCulloch." He didn't bow. "I've come for the river road."

"You can have a drink first," I said.

"I'll have the road." He smiled with half his mouth. "There's an old rule, isn't there? Challenge in the circle, in front of the pack. Win, and I keep my hands off. Lose, and you sign the north timber to me."

I knew the rule, and I knew that I couldn't refuse it.

I stepped down into the circle.

The wolves pulled back to make a ring, and the sound in the hall changed.

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