The Alpha's Regret: Rejecting His Fated White Wolf Mate novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: By Dawn

Bettina packs the truck, Cecily kindly hands over a thermos, and Edmund sets the dawn deadline. At the pack line Hugh asks when Isla saw the doctor. She never did.

I did not cry in the hall, and I did not cry on the stairs.

I climbed to the Luna's room and pulled my two suitcases out from under the bed.

Bettina came in behind me and shut the door with her hip.

"I am going to kill him," she said. "I am going to use the good bread knife."

"You are going to help me pack."

"That too."

She dumped my drawers into the cases without folding anything, and I let her.

My hands were steady, which scared me more than shaking would have.

I had felt his grandmother's ring come off, and the thread go slack, and nothing more.

Everyone had said it would be like losing an arm.

I felt lighter, and I did not know why.

That was wrong, and I knew it was wrong, and I could not make it feel otherwise.

A knock came at the door. It was soft, three taps.

Cecily stood in the hallway with a steel thermos in one hand and a worn wooden box under her other arm.

Her eyes were red.

"I didn't know," she said. "Isla, I swear I didn't know he would do it tonight."

"I believe you."

I did, then.

"I brought coffee for the drive. And this." She held out the box. "It was in the kitchen. Your mother's recipes, right? You'd never forgive me if it got left."

I took it.

My mother's handwriting was on the lid, in faded pencil: Isla's cooking, her own way.

"Thank you," I said, and my voice finally shook.

Cecily squeezed my arm, quickly, and went back down the stairs.

I put the thermos in my bag and the box on top of my clothes.

It took twenty minutes to carry everything down to the truck.

Edmund was waiting by the front steps, in his charcoal overcoat, with his hands folded in front of him.

"Pack law gives you until dawn to leave our land," he said. "I'd rather you not need the whole night."

"I'll be gone in an hour."

"Good."

He looked at the truck, and then at the lodge windows, and then at me, and for a second his courteous face slipped.

It was not anger. It was worry.

"You'll be provided for," he said. "A check will come. Don't make this uglier than it is."

"Where's Torin?"

"In his rooms. He is not well."

"He isn't well because he did this."

"Isla."

His tone was patient, and it was exactly the tone he used on children and on dogs.

"He won't be coming out. Please don't wait for him."

I looked up at the second floor.

There was one lit window at the end of the hall, and a shape in it, bent over with both hands on the glass.

Torin did not lift his head.

Behind that glass he was making a noise I could hear from the drive, low and broken, the sound of a wolf who had lost something and could not say what.

I should have been glad.

I stood there and found that I was not glad at all, and that I was furious with myself for it.

"Isla," Bettina said, quietly, from the truck. "Get in."

I got in.

She drove, because I still could not feel my feet.

The road to the pack line ran through the cedars for four miles.

I watched the lodge lights shrink in the side mirror until the trees ate them.

The gate at the pack line was an iron bar across the road, and a man was standing in front of it with a flashlight.

Hugh Tennant, the Beta, had been at the dinner. He was still in his dress shirt.

He had come all the way out here on foot.

Bettina stopped the truck.

Hugh walked up to my window and waited for me to roll it down.

He did not say he was sorry. Hugh never said what everyone else would.

He held up the beam and looked at me for a long moment, and then at the empty road behind us.

"Edmund gave Torin that folder an hour before dinner," he said. "Torin read it in the car. He didn't ask me a single question about it."

"Hugh, I don't understand."

"The report says you can't carry a pup," Hugh said. "It's dated three weeks ago."

He took a breath.

"Isla, when did you see the doctor?"

The cold went up my arms.

"I never did."

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