Chapter 7: Across the Line

I walked out of the square with every eye on my back.

Nobody stopped me.

June came after me with a bag of sausage still in her fist.

"Did that old buzzard just ban you from the market?"

"From all of it. Pack land. Every inch."

"Your daddy delivered half the council."

"I know, June."

She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and looked back at the square.

"And what the hell was that? With the kneeling? I went down like a sack of feed. You just stood there."

"I don't know."

"You don't know."

"I don't know," I said again, and my voice came out thin. "It just didn't take."

Then she put the sausage bag in my hand.

"Eat that. You're gray."

I drove to the river.

I just needed somewhere the pack didn't own.

The pack line runs down the middle of the bridge.

There's a dent in the railing at the halfway mark, where some Alpha's grandfather put his fist through it a hundred years ago.

On the far side, past the human hospital, there's a long, low building with a faded sign.

COPPER FALLS VETERINARY.

The paint on the paw print had peeled down to the wood.

I pulled into the lot and sat there for a long time.

Then I got out and looked through the window.

Exam rooms.

A surgery with a steel table.

A kennel room in the back with a row of chain-link runs.

Eight hundred feet from the pack line.

The old vet who owned it lived in the yellow house next door.

He took my check, gave me the keys and a bag of dog treats, and said, "Don't let anybody put you down, Doctor."

I think he meant it as a joke.

Abel came over on Sunday afternoon with a hospital van.

I hadn't asked him to.

I had texted him one line.

Is there any old equipment General throws away?

Keep reading free with an account. Start Rejected By The Alpha For An Omega from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.