Run Away From the Cruel Alpha novel · Chapter 16 of 16
Chapter 16: Done Running
I looked down at him.
The Alpha of Ironclaw, on his knees on a Georgia floor.
Six years ago I would have given anything to see him kneel for me.
Now I only wanted him to stand up and go.
"You heard her," I said. "Celia. She said you called me an embarrassment. She said you wished you'd never caught my scent."
"I was a fool."
"You didn't deny it."
"I'm not denying anything now." He reached for my hand. "I'm begging."
I stepped back.
His hand closed on air.
"You laid moonflowers on my grave every Sunday," I said.
"Every Sunday."
"You posted pictures."
"Mireya..."
"You never once walked down to the river," I said. "Not once in three years. My ring was on the rocks. My blood was on the rocks. I was half a mile downstream, crawling. You were at the packhouse, being photographed."
His face twisted.
"And you answered," I said.
The whole hall was silent.
Every pack in the South. Every warrior of Ironclaw.
"Tell them what you said back to me," I said.
Dominic's mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
"Tell them," I said. "Or I will."
He shut his eyes.
"Celia first," he whispered.
A sound went through the Ironclaw side.
Not a word. A kind of groan.
Jace stood up.
He looked at his Alpha on the floor for a long moment.
Then he turned his back.
The warrior beside him turned his back.
Then the next.
Then the whole row.
One by one, the wolves of the Ironclaw Pack turned their backs on Dominic Blackburn.
Marcus was the last.
He turned around with tears on his face.
Dominic looked up and saw it.
The whole right side of the hall. A wall of backs.
An old woman in the Ironclaw front row rose to her feet.
Grandmother Ivy. The oldest of the Ironclaw elders. She had taught me to bake bread in my first winter there.
"Dominic Blackburn," she said, loud and clear. "You left your Luna to burn and lied to your pack about it for three years. The elders of Ironclaw take back your ring."
Dominic stared at her.
Then at his right hand.
He pulled the heavy silver ring off his finger.
He set it on the floorboards in front of him.
It rolled a little and fell over.
He stood.
He didn't look at anyone.
He walked the whole length of the hall between two walls of silent wolves.
The back doors opened for him.
He walked out into the sunlight alone.
I never saw him again.
Grandmother Ivy crossed the floor to me.
She put her dry old hands on my face.
"Come home, child," she said. "Your pack owes you a Luna's welcome."
"I have a home," I said. "I'm sorry. I do."
She looked past me at Rhett.
Then she smiled.
"So you do," she said.
That night Rhett drove me home to Pecan Street.
The two men on my porch stood up when the truck pulled in.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–8 of Run Away From the Cruel Alpha are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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