Fated to My Mate's Uncle novel · Chapter 2 of 32
Chapter 2: The Burn
Fraser's firefighting crew gives her one night; she tells him the boy is Gregor's, Patsy guesses she's pregnant, and at dawn Gregor stands on the far bank claiming the pup.
He let go of my dress.
His eyes flashed gold for one second, then went gray again.
So he'd felt it too.
"Don't," I said, and scrambled back on the gravel.
"Don't what?"
"Don't touch me."
"Wasn't planning on it." He stood up, streaming river water. "You were planning on drowning."
Across the water, Gregor's two enforcers paced the far bank.
One of them cupped his hands around his mouth.
"Fraser! That's the Alpha's Luna! Send her back!"
Fraser looked at them, then down at me.
"Do you want to go back?"
I thought of the guest room.
Our son's right down the hall.
"No."
He raised his voice just enough to carry over the river.
"She says no."
Then he turned his back on the pack and walked up the bank into the dark.
After a second, I followed him.
I didn't have anywhere else to go.
My feet were bare and the burn was all black snags and ash.
Every step smelled like a fire twenty years dead.
He didn't slow down for me.
He didn't speed up either.
The camp sat where the burn met a stand of live pines.
A ring of cabins, a cook shack with its windows lit, a long barn, a fire pit with men around it.
Twenty of them, maybe.
Every one of them stood up when they caught my scent.
I heard a low growl go around that fire.
"That's her," somebody said. "That's the reader."
"Fraser, you've got to be kidding me."
"She swore you into the burn, man."
"It's one night," Fraser said. "Crew rule."
"Crew rule's for strays."
"She's a stray now."
A big wolf with a gray beard spat into the fire.
"She'll be gone at sunup?"
Fraser looked at me.
"She'll be gone at sunup."
The screen door of the cook shack banged open.
A short woman in a flour-dusted apron stomped down the steps with a dish towel over her shoulder.
"Who's yelling in my yard?"
Then she saw me, dripping in my blue dress with my hair in my face.
"Well, hell. Carys Wakeley."
I knew her.
Patsy Stallard had been Keeper of the Keeping for thirty years.
She had handed me the jacket in its evidence bag when I was nineteen.
Gregor had fired her the spring he took the seat.
"Hi, Patsy."
"Don't you 'hi, Patsy' me. You're blue." She grabbed my arm. "Inside. Now. You men sit down and quit growling. You sound like a bunch of busted dirt bikes."
The cook shack was hot and smelled like coffee, bacon grease and bleach.
She sat me on a stool by the woodstove and threw a towel over my head.
Then she came back with a men's flannel shirt, sweatpants with the cuffs rolled four times, and wool socks.
"Change behind the pantry door. Hand me that dress. It's ruined anyway."
Before I gave it to her, I reached into the bodice.
The plastic bag was still there, sealed flat.
The pillowcase.
The pregnancy test had been in the dress pocket.
The pocket was empty.
The river had it now.
I stood behind the pantry door in a stranger's flannel and shook.
When I came out, Fraser was leaning in the doorway with a mug of coffee.
He held it out at arm's length so our fingers wouldn't touch.
"Why'd you run?" he asked.
"Patsy, could you give us a minute?"
"No," Patsy said, and kept wiping the counter.
I laughed. I couldn't help it.
Fraser almost smiled.
So I told them both.
The guest room. Charmaine's voice. Our son's right down the hall.
The boy, born seven months after Angus died.
Gregor's scent on that child every day of his life.
Patsy put the rag down.
Fraser didn't move at all.
He went so still I could hear the stove ticking.
"Seven months," he said.
"Yes."
"Angus had been dead seven months, and the boy came."
"Yes."
"And Gregor was already in her bed."
I didn't answer that. I didn't have to.
He set his mug down very carefully on the counter.
His knuckles had gone white around the handle.
Then he walked out the back door, and a minute later I heard something heavy hit the side of the barn.
Patsy picked his mug up and dumped it in the sink.
"He'll be back. He breaks a lot of firewood."
She gave me the cot in the pantry, behind the flour bins.
I lay awake listening to the crew around the fire.
Every so often I caught my name, and nothing good after it.
Around midnight my stomach rolled over.
I made it out the back door and threw up into Patsy's rhubarb.
When I straightened up, she was standing on the step in her robe, holding a glass of water.
She watched me rinse my mouth.
Then she leaned in and sniffed, the way old wolves do, not even polite about it.
"How far along?"
I stared at her.
"Honey, I've been smelling evidence since before you were born. You're carrying."
"Five weeks."
"His?"
"Gregor's."
"Does he know?"
"No. I didn't tell anyone."
Patsy looked across the burn toward the river.
"Then you'd better pray he doesn't find out before you figure out what to do."
I slept, finally, an hour before dawn.
I woke up to a voice I'd heard every morning for five years.
It was coming over the water through a bullhorn.
"Carys Kinnaird."
I ran out in Patsy's socks.
The whole crew was already on the bank.
Fraser stood at the front of them, shirt off, arms crossed.
On the far side, Gregor stood at the ford in a pressed white shirt with six enforcers behind him.
Charmaine stood at his elbow.
She was holding up a sheet of paper.
I knew that paper.
The clinic printout I'd left on the seat of my truck in the pack hall lot.
"My Luna is carrying," Gregor called across the river. "And under pack law, my pup comes home."
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