The Independence My Alpha Regretted novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Border Stones

Duncan refuses to release Hazel in front of the council, so she walks the nineteen-mile border at dawn; Chelsea meets her with a thermos and tears, and Hazel sets her pendant on the last stone and steps across the line as Duncan runs up.

The council met on Thursday, in the long hall above the pack office, and Duncan came in late again.

He had a bruise of tiredness under each eye, and he still found my chair before he found his own.

I sat with my left arm in a sling and my wolf pacing awake inside me.

Six elders sat along the table.

Clint stood at the back with his arms folded and his eyes on the floor.

"Luna Corrigan has asked for the book," said the eldest, a woman with white braids. "Alpha, you know the law."

"I know it," Duncan said. "I don't know why it's being read."

"Because I'm asking for release," I said.

The hall went still.

Duncan turned his whole body toward me.

"Release from what?"

"From the seat. From the pack. From you."

I said the last part to the table, because I couldn't say it to his face.

"Hazel."

"You can give it now," I said. "Alpha's word, in front of the council, and I go quietly."

"No."

He said it before I finished.

"Duncan."

"No. I'm not signing anything. I don't know what's wrong, and I won't know if you're gone."

"That's exactly what's wrong," I said.

He stood up.

His chair scraped, and every elder pretended to study the grain of the table.

"Tell me one thing I can fix," he said. "Name it. I'll do it tonight."

I looked at him for a long time.

I thought about naming the pup, and I did not.

I thought about naming the nights, and the earrings, and the headlights, and I didn't do that either.

If I had to list it, it would only prove that I had been keeping count.

"I can't name it," I said. "That's the problem you can't fix."

"Then you stay," he said, and his voice cracked on it. "You stay, and we work it out."

"Then I walk the stones."

The old woman drew a breath.

The law was older than the pack hall.

A Luna whose Alpha refused her release could walk the border alone, at dawn, and set her pendant on the last stone.

After that no Alpha could call her back, and no pack could claim her.

It was a hard walk, nineteen miles, and no one had done it in forty years.

"Hazel, you just had surgery," Duncan said.

"I'll go slowly."

"You can't shift yet."

"Then I'll walk."

"I forbid it."

It was the first time he had used the Alpha voice on me in four years.

My wolf rolled over it.

"You can't," I said. "I'm not asking you."

I stood, and my knees held, and I left.

The next morning, at five, Clint drove me to the first stone in the dark.

He didn't say a word the whole way.

At the pull-off he took my bag from the back seat and put it on his own shoulder.

"I'm walking with you to the first marker," he said. "After that I'm a man who didn't see."

"Thank you."

"He's not a bad Alpha, Hazel."

"I know."

"He's a worse husband than he is a bad Alpha," Clint said, "and he's still not a bad one."

I laughed, and it hurt my shoulder.

At the third stone the sky had gone gray, and at the ninth it was pink.

By mile fourteen the sling was soaked and I was singing to the pup under my breath so that I wouldn't think about my feet.

I didn't know I was doing it until Clint looked away.

At mile eighteen a car came down the fire road behind us with its lights still on.

Clint swore.

Then he saw who was driving and he swore more quietly.

It was Duncan's truck, and it was not Duncan who got out.

Chelsea stepped down from the driver's side in her cream coat, wrapped in a blanket, holding a steel thermos in both hands.

She looked small and frozen, and her eyes were wet.

"Hazel," she said. "Please. Don't."

"Where is he?"

"He's at the hall. He doesn't know I came. He didn't sleep." She took a few quick steps toward me, then hesitated. "I made you your tea."

I looked at the thermos.

It was the ginger and honey one she brought me every night.

"I'm not drinking it, Chelsea."

"Hazel, please. You're hurt. You'll get an infection out here."

"I'll be fine."

"You're my sister." She was crying openly now. "He's tearing himself apart. If you leave, he'll fall apart, and so will I. I have no one else."

"You have him."

"I don't want to have him! I want you both to be okay!"

Clint stepped between us.

"Miss Lowell, that's far enough."

She put a hand over her mouth.

Then she looked past me, up the fire road, and her face changed to something I had no name for.

It looked, for half a second, like relief.

Down the fire road a second car skidded to a stop, and Duncan's boots hit the gravel at a dead run.

I turned my back on all of them and walked the last hundred yards to the final stone.

It was gray granite, waist high, with the pack's wolf cut into it.

I unclasped my moonstone pendant and set it on the top.

Behind me, I heard Duncan shout my name.

I stepped across the line, and the pack's hold on me let go.

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