Chapter 8: The Lodge at Night

Torin's POV

I stood in the doorway of the smaller bedroom at the lodge for an hour and did not go in.

Orin slept on his back with one arm flung over his head.

Hazel slept curled on her side with her glasses folded on the nightstand and one hand around a stuffed rabbit's ear.

Ingrid had put them to bed herself and told me to stay out.

I stayed out.

I had been the Alpha of Hollowbrook for two years, and I had never wanted anything I could not simply take.

I wanted to cross the room and put my hand on their hair.

I did not.

My phone, which had rung in the alley and which I had not answered, buzzed again on the hall table.

It said Father, and this time I picked it up.

"You found her," Aldric said.

His voice was the dry rasp it had been since the illness.

"News travels," I said.

"It's my pack. Everything travels. I hear she had children," Aldric said.

"Two," I said.

"Yours?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

There was a pause on the line.

"Then you will do what is necessary," my father said.

"Pay her again, more this time. Place the children with a family in the east. Have her sign something."

I looked out of the hall window at the black trees.

"They are my heirs," I said.

"They are a stain on a clean line, and the council will laugh at you."

"Then the council can laugh," I said.

"Torin," Aldric said.

"I won't send them east, and I won't pay her," I said.

"If you or anyone you hire goes near them, I will answer it myself."

"You are making a mistake you cannot undo."

"I made it seven years ago," I said.

"I am fixing it."

I ended the call and put my palm flat on the cold glass until my hand was steady.

Then I went to work.

At three in the morning I woke the pack's lawyer, who owed me his license.

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