They Stole Her for a Breeding Den, She Chose the Alpha Who Let Her Leave novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: The Docks
We reached the freight dock at six, with the sky still dark over the water.
Darius drove with one hand on the wheel and the other flat on his knee, and he did not speak.
Eli sat in the back.
I watched the cranes come up out of the fog, one after another, and my mouth tasted of metal.
Nico's old truck was parked by the container stacks.
Beyond it, at the end of the pier, a long grey boat sat low in the water with her ropes out.
Men stood on the planks.
I counted fourteen, and I knew most of them from the lodge, the drivers and the dock hands who had nodded at me in the courtyard and looked away.
Two strangers stood at the boat's gangway.
Between them, in a green coat, with her purse clutched against her chest, stood my mother.
I stopped breathing.
She was fifty-eight, and she looked smaller than I remembered.
Her hair was flat from the road, and she was staring up at the cranes, trying to work out what kind of harbor this was.
"Wait," Darius said, and caught my wrist at the car door.
"That's my mother," I said.
"I know. Look at Nico."
Nico stood on the planks between my mother and the dock.
He had his back to her.
He faced a heavy man with a ring on every finger, the same man who had voted to hold me in the guest chambers.
I could hear them from where we stood.
"Take her to the lodge," the heavy man said. "Silas says she is to be given a bed and a hot meal, and told nothing. Is that so hard?"
"She's not a guest," Nico said.
His voice cracked on it.
"No," the heavy man agreed, mildly. "She's an old woman who wants to see her daughter. And in a day and a half, the girl will do anything to keep her safe. You know that, boy. You've known it since Silas told you."
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