His Mate Hated Me, So I Went Home to the Humans, but His Wolf Followed novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Mate Dinner
A new mate takes Calla's chair, Darian promises to talk later and forgets her within an hour, and Calla walks out of the only home she has.
At dinner, in front of forty wolves, Darian's new mate asked why a human was sitting in the Luna's chair.
I had sat in that chair since I was twelve.
It was the seat at Darian's left, and it had been empty since his mother died.
Nobody had ever asked me to move.
"I'm sorry," Delaney said, and she smiled while she said it. "I don't mean to be rude. But that's the mate's seat, isn't it?"
Her rosewater oil reached me across the table.
My eyes started to stream, the way they always did around it.
I looked at Darian.
He was looking at his plate.
An hour earlier, in the hall, he had caught my sleeve and said, "After dinner. I need to talk to you. It's important."
He had been avoiding my eyes for two days, since the morning he came home from the border meeting and told the pack he'd found his mate.
I had been happy for him.
I had said so, and I had meant it.
"Cal," he said now, still to his plate. "Just for tonight. Switch with Joan."
I stood up.
Forty people watched me carry my plate down the table.
Darian reached to pass me the salt as I went and set it on the cloth beside my hand, not in it.
He had done that since my eighteenth birthday.
Bread, my glass, the car keys, all of it set down next to me, never handed over.
I had decided years ago he was just being polite to his parents' adopted kid.
Aunt Joan pulled out the chair beside hers.
Her glasses were fogged and her eyes were red and streaming as badly as mine.
"Sit, Calla, sweetheart," she said quietly. "It's mate fever. Every wolf is an idiot for a week. Give him a week."
"Are you all right?" I asked. "Your eyes."
"Pollen." She patted my hand. "I'll turn in early. I have a head full of hives."
She left before the dessert came out.
Delaney took the Luna's chair.
Darian pulled it in for her and did not look down the table at me once.
After dinner I went up to my room and sat on my bed to wait for him.
I told myself he would knock in ten minutes.
When an hour had gone by, I opened my closet.
I put my clothes in two bags and cried over the second one, which was stupid, because it was only clothes.
Then I carried both bags downstairs and set them by the front door.
I could not leave without telling Aunt Joan, or she would hunt the whole valley for me.
I knocked on her bedroom door.
"Not tonight, love," she said from inside, her voice thick. "We'll talk in the morning."
By the morning I would be gone.
I went back down the hall to look for someone who could carry her a message.
I heard the noise before I reached the common room.
A low moan, a grunt, and then a woman screamed Darian's name.
I stopped in the doorway.
I saw too much of Darian's back and Delaney's legs, and I put my arm over my eyes.
"Sorry!" I said. "I'm so sorry. I was passing through."
"Cal, wait."
Cloth rustled behind me, a lot of it.
"No," I said. "Carry on. I'll find another way to reach Joan."
I walked fast down the hallway with my eyes burning.
Darian had called it important, and it had taken him less than an hour to forget me.
I got as far as my bags.
"Cal, stop."
He was already in front of the door, faster than I had thought a person could move, in nothing but his jeans.
I shut my eyes.
His mate would break my arm if she caught me looking at him.
"You've packed," he said. "Where do you think you're going? Why are you crying?"
"You said after dinner," I said.
He didn't answer.
"It's been an hour and a half, Darian."
Behind him, Delaney came down the hall wrapped in a throw blanket.
"He's mine," she said. "Get her out of here. Darian, make her go."
I opened my eyes.
Darian's face was open and sick, and he looked at me, and he looked at her.
"Cal, what I wanted to say to you tonight was..."
Delaney clutched her chest and cried out. "Darian. It hurts. Darian."
He turned around.
He turned around, and he went to her.
So I took both bags, opened the front door, and walked out.
The gate was nine miles down the valley road.
I walked all of them in the dark, because a human can't shift and nobody was going to drive me.
Somewhere past the creek I stopped hearing my own footsteps and started hearing another set.
I didn't turn around.
A wolf walked at the edge of the road, level with me, then a few lengths behind, all night.
At dawn I reached the bus stop on Route 20.
He lay down in the ferns across the highway, grey-green eyes on me, and he did not come any closer.
I got on the bus.
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