I Don't Come Back to My Alpha Again novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Sixteen

Tobin went white.

Coral walked down the dock toward us, slow, her sandals tapping on the boards.

"How long have you been in there?" I said.

"Long enough." She stopped in front of Tobin and tilted her head at him, all sorrow. "Oh, honey. Is this what she's been doing? Filling your head with stories?"

"They're not stories," Tobin said. But his voice had gone small.

"A candy bar under the porch." She sighed. "Sweetheart, you were ten. You'd had a terrible night. You remember it however she tells you to remember it now."

"That's not..."

"Your father's in the car at the top of the road." She held out her hand. "He's worried sick. Come on. Let's go home before he comes down here himself."

Tobin looked at me.

I gave him the smallest shake of my head.

Not now.

He understood. I saw him understand.

He picked up his basketball and walked past Coral without taking her hand and went up the path toward the road.

Coral watched him go.

Then she turned back to me, and the sorrow slid off her face.

"You're a sad thing, Jo," she said softly. "You know that? You were always the princess. The Alpha's girl. I spent my whole childhood standing one step behind you, holding your coat."

"I never asked you to hold my coat."

"You never had to ask." She smiled. "Now I've got your house. Your husband. Your boy. Your mother's pearls. And you've got a cabin and a tracker with no house."

"You asked for those wounds," I said.

It was a guess.

It landed.

Her eyes flicked, just once, to the mud bank behind the boathouse.

"Prove it," she said, and walked away.

Two days later my phone buzzed.

A photo of a printed card. Gold letters.

The Alpha and Luna invite you to celebrate Tobin's sixteenth birthday.

Luna. She'd put Luna on it.

Under the photo Tobin had typed:

"Come."

The Pack House was lit up like a wedding.

There were paper lanterns on the porch and a band in the great hall and half the pack in their good clothes, drinking Ansel's wine.

They went quiet when I walked in.

I'd borrowed a plain black dress from the baker's daughter. My hair was still a mess. I didn't care.

Tobin was by the fireplace in a new jacket that didn't fit him yet.

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