Chapter 6: Midnight Study

Lachlan drove me home from the hall in silence.

He stopped the truck at my gate and left the engine running.

"Here are the rules," he said, staring through the windshield.

"You have rules?"

"I won't touch you unless you ask me to. You sleep in your house, and I sleep in mine."

"Fine."

"If the fever gets bad, you call Pearl."

"Not you?"

"Call Pearl," he said, so flatly that I got out and slammed the door.

I lasted until midnight.

The fever climbed my ribs and sat on my chest, and my wolf paced inside me.

I put on my boots and my coat over my T-shirt and walked up the ridge in the dark.

The Alpha's house stood at the top, long and low with a porch light on.

A lamp was burning in the study window.

I didn't knock.

The front door was unlocked.

I found him in the study, behind a desk covered in old leather books.

His sleeves were pushed up, and a glass of whiskey sat untouched at his elbow.

He looked up, and his whole body went still.

"June."

"You said call Pearl."

"I did."

"Pearl's asleep," I said. "So I came here."

He closed the book in front of him very carefully.

"Go home."

"Cade said four more days," I said. "I want to know what that means."

His jaw moved.

"Sit down."

"I'll stand."

"Then stand." He looked at the book, not at me. "On the night of the Blood Moon, I turn thirty-nine."

"So?"

"Pack law calls it the Alpha's year. An Alpha who reaches it unmated loses his wolf. The seat goes to the heir."

Keep reading free with an account. Start After My Fiancé Rejected Me, I Became His Uncle's Fated Mate from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.