I Don't Come Back to My Alpha Again novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Voice at the Gate

Beck stitches her arm and they finally see each other's faces after five years of talking through bars; she tells him her plan, and a midnight knock brings Tobin to the door.

"You took your time," Beck said.

I stood there in the clearing and stared at him.

Five years of nights.

Five years of a voice on the other side of the iron, low and slow and dry as old paper.

I had never once seen him say anything.

I'd only heard it.

"You're bleeding," he said. "Sit down before you fall down."

"How did you know I'd come here?"

"Because you told me. Three winters ago." He patted the step beside him. "You said if you ever got out, you'd rather sleep on your father's floor than in Ansel's bed."

I'd forgotten I said that.

He hadn't.

I sat down.

He'd swept the porch. The roof Ansel called half gone had new shingles on it. The windows were clean.

"Did you do all this?"

"The roof leaked." He shrugged. "Seemed a shame."

"For five years?"

He didn't answer that.

He picked up a pair of scissors instead. "Shirt."

"Excuse me?"

"The sleeve, Jo. I'm cutting the sleeve. Calm down."

Inside, he lit the oil lamp on my father's kitchen table and sat me in my father's chair.

He was bigger than I remembered from before.

Tall and rangy, with sandy hair and a short beard and a nose that had been broken at least twice.

He put on a pair of reading glasses, scowled, and took them off again.

"Don't," he said.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were going to."

I was. I bit my lip.

He cut the sleeve away and looked at the bite. His mouth went thin.

"This is going to hurt."

"Everything hurts."

He cleaned it with something that burned.

I didn't make a sound.

He stitched it with small, neat stitches, his big hands steady on my arm.

His thumb rested on the inside of my elbow the whole time.

I could feel my pulse against it.

So could he.

Neither of us said so.

"Ansel fired me this morning," he said, tying off the last knot. "Gave the gate to his Beta."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not." He snipped the thread. "I only wanted the job while you were in it."

He said it to my stitches, not to me.

I let it sit there.

"You owe me a rematch," I said.

His eyes came up. They were green. I hadn't known that.

"You cheated."

"I did not."

"You moved your bishop through your own pawn, Jo. I heard you do it."

"You can't hear a bishop."

"I could hear you smiling."

I laughed.

It came out rusty.

He looked at me.

Then he packed up the first-aid kit and set it on the counter.

"So," he said. "What now?"

I'd had five years to think about that.

"The Moon Council comes in thirty days," I said. "Any wolf with new proof can ask them to hear a case again. I want my conviction thrown out in front of all of them."

He nodded slowly.

"I want Rhoda out. And the twins, and the fiddler, and everyone else Ansel put in there for nothing."

"That's a lot."

"I'm not finished." I put my good hand flat on the table. "I want my son back."

He didn't tell me it was impossible.

He just reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small black notebook, soft and curled with age.

"Harvest Run night," he said. "I went out to the boathouse before the healer was even done with Coral. Measured every print in the mud."

He opened it and turned it to face me.

There were neat sketches. Numbers.

"Paw spread on the front left was four and a half inches," he said. "Your wolf's barely three and a half. I've seen it. Whatever went after Coral was a big male."

"You told them this?"

"In the hearing." His jaw went hard. "Ansel laughed. Said I couldn't measure a puddle."

"And then you went up to the gate."

"And then I went up to the gate."

The lamp hissed between us.

I realized how close we were sitting.

His knee was against mine under the table.

Neither of us moved it.

He looked at my mouth.

Just for a second. I saw him do it.

Five years, and I had never seen his eyes. Now I couldn't look anywhere else.

I leaned in.

So did he.

His breath was warm against my lips, and he smelled like woodsmoke and pine, and I wanted him so badly it frightened me.

Somebody pounded on the cabin door.

We both jerked back.

It was nearly midnight. There was nobody on this ridge.

Beck was on his feet first, between me and the door.

"Who is it?" he called.

No answer. Just pounding again, hard and furious.

I pushed past him and opened it.

My son was standing on the porch in the rain.

His hoodie was soaked through and his dark hair was plastered to his forehead.

He'd walked two miles in the dark to get here.

"You need to sign it," Tobin said.

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