After the Tenth Bond Break: I Became the Luna of the Shadowfang Alpha novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Gate

Danica packs in an hour and walks through four guards ordered to hold her. Carson's nose bleeds, hers does not, and a truck is waiting at the boundary road.

I packed in the time it took the pack to walk back from the ring.

A duffel bag, my vet scrubs, my father's work gloves, and the photograph of the old farm.

Everything else in Carson's house had been bought for the Alpha's mate, and I left it hanging in the closet.

I was zipping the bag when the front door opened.

Carson came in first, still grey, with June a step behind him carrying a tea flask.

"You've made your point," he said. "Unpack."

"I'm leaving, Carson."

"You've left before. You were at your cousin's for a night after the fourth rite, and you came back with a casserole."

"That was before you asked me to step aside."

He rubbed his face with both hands.

"I said it badly. I'm under pressure. Everyone in that ring expects a Luna by winter, and June is the only one they would accept. It's temporary."

"Temporary until when?"

He didn't answer, because there was no answer.

June set the flask on the table and unscrewed the cup.

"Drink this, Dani. It's the same blend as always. The fever will hit you in an hour and you won't be able to drive."

I looked at the steam coming off the cup.

I looked at her kind, worried face.

"I won't have a fever, June."

"You always do."

"I don't feel anything but fine."

Something small moved behind her eyes and was gone.

"That's the shock," she said gently. "It always wears off."

I picked up my bag.

Carson stepped in front of the door and took hold of my wrist.

His grip was meant to be firm, and it was not.

His fingers slid off my sleeve.

He looked at his own hand.

"Let me by," I said.

He did, because his knees would not let him do anything else.

I walked down the porch steps into the evening.

The gate of Greywater stands a quarter mile from the house, two iron posts and a chain, and tonight the chain was up.

June's father stood in front of it.

He was the pack's Beta, a thick-necked man with a grey crewcut who had never once learned my name correctly.

Four guards stood behind him, shoulder to shoulder.

"Alpha's right," he said. "A broken mate stays until the mend. It's in the old law."

"You broke nothing," I said. "He did."

"Then he can mend it."

"He doesn't have to, because I won't take it."

"It's not your choice, girl."

I kept walking.

The nearest guard reached out and clamped a hand on my upper arm.

I only meant to pull my arm free.

He went sideways off his feet and hit the gravel on his shoulder, and the gate chain rattled where he struck it.

Nobody spoke.

The guard sat up and held his shoulder and stared at me.

"I barely moved," I said.

"I know," he whispered. "I felt it."

The other three guards stepped back.

The Beta's face went through three expressions and settled on fury.

"Hold her!" he barked. "That's an order from your Beta!"

None of them moved.

Behind me, a man made a strange, choked sound.

I turned.

Carson had followed me down the drive, and a thin line of blood was running from his nose over his lip.

He wiped it with the back of his hand and stared at the red on his knuckles.

June was at his side at once, holding a cloth to his face.

"It's the stress," she said, to the guards, to the Beta, to the dusk. "Look at him. She's done this to him."

"What did you do to me?" Carson said, over the cloth.

"Nothing," I said.

I felt no triumph, only a tired, clean certainty.

I lifted the chain off its hook myself and let it drop.

Then I walked out onto the county road with a duffel on my shoulder and a hundred wolves watching from the porches.

I had told the man on the phone to meet me at the boundary marker, three miles down, where the road forks.

I expected to wait there for hours.

When I came around the last bend, a black truck was already parked on the shoulder with its engine off.

A tall man leaned against the door with his arms folded, and he was looking straight up the road at me.

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