The Wolf Who Can't Shift Just Dropped One novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Withdraw It

Corbin's POV

Ashgrove took Bernard away in the dark, and nobody said where.

The seven Alphas stayed to see the old keeper write a line in the roll.

She did it standing, under a torch, with a steel pen.

Larissa Aldren. Cedar smoke and river water. Wolf of Ashgrove.

She left the pack beside the line blank, and she looked at me when she did it.

I looked at the ground.

By midnight the clearing had emptied, and Larissa drove her father's truck home to the burned cabin with the heater off.

I followed in mine and parked at the cattle gate.

I stood at the gate for as long as I could stand it.

Then I walked up the lane.

She was sitting on the one good step in her canvas jacket with her knuckles split open, and the moon on her braid.

She did not turn her head.

"You can sit," she said.

I sat on the ground, two steps below her, with my back to the burned post.

For a while neither of us spoke.

The night was very clear, and the stars were out, and somewhere down the hill a dog barked at nothing.

A real dog.

I had a lot of things I had planned to say.

All of them were gone.

"You're still here," I said.

"I live here."

"You could have gone to the lodge. You could have gone anywhere. They'd have given you the whole of Ashgrove tonight. You're the Alpha's heir. Ashgrove saw you beat its beta with your hands."

"I beat my cousin," she said. "I hit my uncle once. It wasn't much."

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