He Staged My Funeral, Now His Wolf Howls at My Door novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Eight O'Clock

Calvin drives Hazel to her home pack, where her parents tell her to be good and go live as a rogue. Her father hands her a black card, and her mother locks a shock collar on her neck.

Calvin Reese was waiting at the side door of the lab at eight.

His black SUV was running, and the passenger window was down.

He rolled the window halfway down and looked at me for a long moment.

"Three years," he said. "How is your wolf?"

"Better. Eamon took care of her."

I got in the passenger side. An open bottle of nerve drops sat in the cup holder.

"The road gets rough for a weak wolf," Calvin said, eyes on the windshield. "Take two drops. It helps."

I picked up the little glass bottle and turned it in my fingers.

He had been my husband for a year when Eamon came.

He had never once been cruel to me.

He had never once stopped anything, either.

"I had no choice back then," he said. "Please don't hate me for it."

He had sworn he would come for me, and he never came.

"It's fine," I said. "It's in the past."

He let out a long breath, and I let him believe me.

We drove east out of Seattle, up through the pass and down into dry country.

Marla's stitches were in, and she was sitting on my lab stool with a cold pack when I left.

She had pressed a folded note into my coat pocket.

I did not read it yet. I could feel it against my ribs.

By ten we were in Spokane.

The Brennan house sat dark and large at the end of its gravel drive.

Calvin parked in the underground garage and cut the engine.

My mother and father were already there, standing beside a concrete pillar.

My mother had put on her good pearls.

She did not hug me.

"There she is," my father said. "Look at you. Thin as a rail."

"Hello, Father."

"Your Alpha's been very generous with us, Hazel," my mother said. "We want you to understand that."

"I understand it."

"Then you understand what tomorrow is."

My father stepped closer and lowered his voice.

"The Mackay contract keeps our timber business alive."

"The pack has leaned on it for three years. If this ceremony goes badly, we lose it."

"So I should make it go well."

"Be a good girl," my mother said.

"Go live as a rogue. The whole pack will thank you for this."

I looked at her for a while.

She did not look away, but her hand went to her pearls.

"Has anyone asked if I'm afraid?" I said.

Nobody answered me.

Calvin studied the floor. His jaw was tight, and his fingers were white around the car keys.

"Hazel." My father pushed a black plastic card into my hand.

"If a border patrol stops you, show this and give our name."

"It has high clearance."

"Burn it once you cross. No one can ever link you back to this family."

No hug came with it.

I held it up so the light caught the chip.

"I'll burn it," I said. "I'll burn all of it."

He nodded, pleased, and did not hear what I meant.

"One more thing." My mother opened her handbag and took out something that clinked.

A thin steel collar, with two small electrodes on the inside and a tiny blinking light.

"The Alpha's physician sent it," she said.

"Your wolf is unstable on a stage. It will keep her quiet through the rejection, so there's no scene."

"I'm a doctor, Mother. I know what that does to a wolf."

"Then you know it won't hurt for long."

She stepped behind me.

I could have fought her. I could have shifted and run.

But the Alpha's men were parked at the end of the drive.

The Brennan pack was awake upstairs, and Marla's note was still in my pocket.

So I lifted my hair out of the way.

The collar closed with a small, clean click around my neck.

My wolf screamed once, inside me, and went numb.

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