My Alpha Told Me to Stop Needing Him. So I Disappeared novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Empty House

Corbin wakes howling, finds her ring on his pillow and 112 unanswered calls, and the lobby video everywhere. When he tries to shift to track her, his wolf will not come and his eyes stay brown.

Corbin's POV

The howl came out of my throat before I knew I was awake.

I was on the couch in the clinic waiting room with Tiffany's cardigan over my knees, and the sun was barely up.

Something that had been in my chest for four years had been pulled out in the night.

I had felt it every day without noticing it.

Now it was gone, and the place where it had been burned.

"Corbin?" Tiffany came out of the exam room in her coat, with her hair in its loose knot. "You were shouting."

"Anneliese," I said. "Something's wrong with Anneliese."

I drove home with the window down and my hands shaking on the wheel.

The house was clean and quiet.

Her boots were gone from the mat.

Her leather tools were gone from the workbench in the sunroom, and the bench was dusted bare.

On my side of the bed, on the pillow, sat her wedding ring.

I picked it up and it was cold.

My phone showed a number I didn't want to read, and I read it anyway.

One hundred and twelve calls, all mine, all unanswered.

I had started calling at nine the night before, when she hadn't texted back.

I had thought she was being stubborn.

I had thought she would come around by morning, because she always did.

Tobias was at the front door when I came down the stairs.

My Beta was thirty, freckled, and the only man in the pack who looked at me straight.

"The whole town saw it, Alpha," he said. "The lobby. Somebody posted it before midnight."

"Posted what?"

He held out his phone.

On the screen I stood in the lobby with my hand on Tiffany's back, and I said, You've always been the strong one. Stop needing me for this.

There were forty thousand views.

Under it, people had written things about me I would not repeat.

"She was fine," I said. "She said okay."

"Alpha." Tobias took the phone back. "She had a folder in her hand and she said okay to you at the worst moment of her life."

"It was silver splinters."

"It was a surgery she booked by herself, because you weren't answering her."

"I was at the council."

Tobias said nothing for a moment.

"She stopped sending you photos in January," he said. "Did you notice that?"

I hadn't.

Tiffany arrived with a covered dish and a bright, tired face, and I was glad to see her and ashamed that I was.

"Oh, Corbin." She put her hand on my arm. "I'm so sorry. She must be at the lake house, or with one of her friends."

"She doesn't have friends outside the pack," I said. "She doesn't have anyone."

"That's what I mean." Tiffany's voice was soft. "Think about it. She has always leaned on you for everything. She'll come back by dinner."

I wanted that to be true.

"Besides," Tiffany said, and she squeezed my arm, "you never needed her the way she needed you. You're the Alpha. You're strong on your own."

Something in my chest went cold at that.

I didn't know why.

"I'm going to track her," I said.

I walked out to the back garden and pulled off my shirt and called my wolf.

I had done it ten thousand times.

My bones should have bent and slid, and the heat should have run up my spine.

Nothing came.

I stood on the grass with my teeth clenched and my fists shaking.

I called again.

There was only a faint, thin scratching, far down inside me, and it was too weak to climb.

It had been quiet for two years, though I had never said so out loud.

I had told myself it was the council, and the long trips.

I had told myself I was just tired.

Behind me, a branch cracked.

Tobias stood at the edge of the lawn with his arms at his sides.

He was staring at my face.

"Your eyes," he said.

"What about them?"

"They're brown." He swallowed. "Alpha, they should be amber when you call him. They've stayed brown."

Tiffany had come to the back door with the dish still in her hands.

I looked at her, and for half a second, before she smoothed it over, I saw her mouth tighten.

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