Chapter 11: My Mother

Wyatt didn't raise his voice.

"In August," he said, "I hadn't seen your daughter since she was a kid at the county fair."

"Liar," one of the warriors said.

"I'm not the one in this store who's lying." Wyatt looked at my father. "And you know it, Corwin."

My father's face went a darker red.

He picked up the sack again, threw it on the cart, and pushed the cart past us toward the register so hard it clipped my hip.

I didn't move out of the way.

The owner rang him up in total silence.

My father paid in cash and walked out without his change.

The bell on the door jangled behind him.

After a while, the ranchers started talking again.

On the drive back, I didn't say anything.

Wyatt didn't either.

At the bridge he slowed down and looked at the white line as we rolled over it.

"He saw something," he said.

"What?"

"When you said silverleaf. Your father. Something went across his face."

"I saw it too."

"So he knows the word."

"Every old wolf knows the word," I said. "He just doesn't want to know what it means."

On Wednesday night my phone rang at eleven.

It was a number I didn't know.

"Brynn."

My mother's voice. Very quiet.

"Mom?"

"I'm at the bridge. On our side. Can you come?"

I almost said no.

Then I heard her breathing, short and scared.

Wyatt drove me.

He stopped fifty yards back from the white line and turned off his headlights and stayed in the truck.

My mother was standing at the Redmoor end of the bridge under the first orange light.

She had her old blue station wagon parked on the shoulder with the hatch open.

She was in her nightgown under a long coat, and her hair was down.

I had never seen my mother outside the house with her hair down.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Alpha Mate Secretly Got My Sister Pregnant from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.