He Rejected Me Out Loud and Kept Other Women, So I Never Answered novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Leave

Rhiannon's POV

The winter ferry left on Friday at eight, and by seven the whole dock was full.

Nobody had called them.

They had come down the harbor road in twos and threes with their collars up, because a mother was going to her sister's and a daughter had been told to ask for leave.

My mother stood at the foot of the gangway with one suitcase and a hatbox.

She wore her good coat, buttoned right.

My father had not come.

I stood three feet from her with my hands in my jacket pockets and a coil of line over my shoulder, because I was on the deck crew and the run was mine.

"You'll write," I said.

"Every Sunday."

"Not a postcard."

"A letter, with the weather in it," my mother said, and her mouth shook. "I'll say how the sound looks. I'll say if I'm warm."

I put my arms round her one more time.

She walked up the gangway without looking back, and I knew what that cost her.

On the dock behind me the pack went quiet.

I turned round.

Doran had come down the harbor road in his father's coat with his hat in his hand.

He stopped at the bollard.

It was the exact spot, three feet from where I stood, where he had stopped every morning for a month.

Hester Ballance stood a little apart beside the ferry captain with her cane and her black coat.

She did not look at either of us.

I had not slept.

I had lain in the net loft all night with the stove ticking and thought about the word leave.

I had thought: a wolf who asks is a wolf who has a door.

I had thought: I would like to see him open it.

I walked across the planks until I stood in front of him.

"Alpha," I said, loud enough for the dock.

"Etheridge," he said.

"I'm a wolf of this island."

"You are," he said.

I lifted my chin. "No wolf may go on the winter ferry without the Alpha's leave. I'd like to ask for mine."

Nobody breathed.

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