The Last Time He Called Me Dad novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Gate

The gate guards refuse to open it until the elders rule that a resigned Luna may take a child whose rite is undone; Tobin tells his kneeling father he wrote that he would never miss it, and Lorna puts her shawl on Conall as Catriona leaves, then at 3 a.m. a grey wolf sits watching the cabin.

Otis lived eleven miles away, and the gate guards would not open the gate.

There were two of them, young wolves in the pack's grey jackets, and neither would look me in the face.

"Luna," the taller one said, then caught himself. "Catriona. The Alpha's son doesn't leave territory without the Alpha's word."

"I resigned in front of all of you."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Then I'm not your Luna, and I'm not asking you."

"Yes, ma'am," he said again, and stayed exactly where he was.

Tobin leaned against my leg.

The ridge was a long way up behind us, but I could hear the pack coming down the trail, a hundred and fifty pairs of boots on gravel.

They came out of the dark in a slow crowd.

The three elders walked at the front, and Conall came last, with no coat, running.

I hadn't seen him run since the night Tobin was born.

He stopped three feet from me, breathing hard.

"Catriona. What did you drink?"

"Ask the herb-healer."

"Tell me what you drank."

I pressed my fist against my ribs, where the pull used to be.

Conall flinched.

It was small, a jerk of his shoulder, and I put it down to the cold.

"The Unbinding," I said. "It's done."

Nobody in the crowd made a sound.

Conall looked at the guards and said, quietly, "Nobody opens that gate."

"Alpha," the oldest elder said.

He was a stooped man with a white braid who had sat beside Conall's father at this same gate forty years ago.

"The law is plain. A Luna who resigns at the stone may leave with her own child if the child's rite has not been done."

"The rite is next year."

"Then it has not been done."

"Tobin's my son."

"Yes," the elder said. "And you named another boy on the stone tonight, and left yours standing in the grass. I watched you. So did the rest of them."

Conall turned to the crowd.

They looked at the ground.

Lorna stood near the back with Emmett asleep on her shoulder.

She was crying, and she did not look at me.

"Catriona," Conall said. His voice dropped. "Emmett was sick. He could have died."

"He had a fever, Conall."

"I didn't know that."

"Neither did I. I wasn't the one who walked past our son."

He looked down.

Tobin had let go of my leg.

He stood in front of his father in the grey cloak, with his chin up and his hands empty.

"You said you'd come," he said.

Conall went down on one knee in the gravel.

"I came, Tobin. I'm here."

"You came for Emmett."

Conall opened his mouth.

I watched him look for the answer, and I watched him fail to find it.

"You wrote it," Tobin said. "You wrote 'I would never miss it.' Mom showed me."

Conall's hand came up toward his face and stopped halfway.

There was a pale scar across his palm from a trap he'd pulled a pup out of years before.

I used to kiss it when he came home late.

Nobody moved.

The old elder gave a short nod to the guards.

"Open the gate."

The tall guard swung it wide.

I took Tobin's hand and walked through.

Behind me, Conall didn't say my name again.

I heard Lorna's voice, soft and shaking.

"Here. You're freezing, Conall, take this."

She'd put her shawl around his shoulders.

I didn't turn around to see him let her.

Otis's truck came up the logging road with its brights on.

He got out, six foot three in his canvas jacket, took one look at us, and pulled his cap off.

"Get in the truck," he said. "Both of you. Don't tell me anything yet."

He drove with one hand and held Tobin's sleeve with the other the whole way down the mountain.

It was past two when I finally got Tobin into the spare bed at the cabin, still in his cloak, because he wouldn't let me take it off.

I lay down beside him on top of the covers.

"Mom."

"Yes."

"Can Dad still smell me? From where he lives?"

"No, baby. We're too far."

"Good," he said, and went to sleep with his fist under his chin.

I lay there, listening to the quiet in my chest.

For seven years I had never been alone in my own body.

Now there was nothing there at all, and I couldn't say if it felt like rest or like being buried.

Around three, I got up for water and looked out of the kitchen window.

Across Cutbank Road, where the logging trucks turn around, a big grey wolf sat in the dark at the edge of the trees.

It didn't move.

It just faced the cabin.

I pulled the curtain shut.

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