My Alpha's Regret Came Too Late novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Door Code
Home from seven years on the Line, Mirren finds her best friend in her mate's shirt and hears his thoughts plotting a test, so she walks to the Homecoming Fire and spends her Border Right on a ruined waystation instead of the Luna seat; the Keeper tells her the bond is dying and runs only one way.
I had been on the Line for seven years, and the door to my mate's house didn't know me anymore.
I punched in our code. Our bonding date.
The keypad blinked red.
I tried again, slower.
Red.
I tried his birthday, in case he'd changed it to something stupid.
Red.
My duffel bag was still on my shoulder. It held everything I owned.
I had quit my captain's post for this door. They had offered me the whole eastern station, and I'd said no, because Lorcan Ravensworth was waiting.
I lifted my hand to knock.
The door opened from the inside.
It wasn't Lorcan.
It was Meriel Carraway, my best friend since first grade.
She was wearing one of his white dress shirts and nothing I could see under it. The hem stopped high on her thighs.
His scent was all over her. Cedar and Alpha, soaked into her hair, her throat, her skin.
Not a hug's worth.
A night's worth.
"Mirren!" She smiled like I was a neighbor dropping off a casserole. "You're home early!"
"I'm home on the day I said."
"Oh. Right." She tucked her hair behind her ear. "I had this awful fight with my roommate, so I've been staying with your fiance for a while. He didn't mention it?"
For a while.
My mate's house was a spare couch.
Down the hall, the bathroom door opened in a cloud of steam.
Lorcan came out with a pale pink towel slung low on his hips. Water ran from his dark hair down his chest.
That towel was Meriel's. I'd given it to her for her birthday.
He looked at me in the doorway and frowned.
"Don't stand in the door, Mirren. You're letting the cold in."
Seven years.
That was hello.
"Meriel's in the master tonight," he said. "Her back's been bad. You can take the guest room."
He said it.
Then something slid into my head that wasn't mine.
It came through the bond, thin and crackling.
[Did you meet another Alpha out there?]
[Say it's your house. Say she has no right.]
[Come on. Get mad. Fight me. Show me you still care.]
I stood very still.
I had felt his moods through the bond for seven years, faint as weather. I had never once heard his words.
He'd always been like this.
If I answered a letter late, he took Meriel to the Antler and made sure someone told me.
If I missed one of my monthly calls, Meriel slept over at the main house, "just on the couch."
Each time, I'd driven myself sick. I'd called and cried and apologized for things I hadn't done.
That was the whole point, I understood now.
He wanted the crying.
I looked past him.
A lace bra and two pairs of underwear were drying on the balcony rail. Not mine.
A pair of fuzzy slippers sat outside the master bedroom. Not mine.
Meriel leaned against the doorframe, and his scent rolled off her so thick I could barely find her own under it.
I waited for the questions to come.
How long. Since when. Why her.
Nothing came.
There was nothing left I wanted to know.
I stepped back off the porch and hitched my duffel higher.
"Mirren?" Lorcan said.
[Good. Here it comes. Now slam the door.]
I didn't slam anything.
I walked down the hill toward town.
The Homecoming Fire was already lit outside the pack hall.
It burns once a year, for whoever comes back from the Line. This year that was only me.
Half the pack was standing around it with paper cups of cider. Someone had hung a banner. WELCOME HOME, CAPTAIN.
The old Keeper sat in her folding chair by the flames, wrapped in three blankets.
People cheered when they saw me.
Then they saw my face and the cheering died off in pieces.
Behind me, a truck door slammed. Lorcan had pulled on jeans and a flannel. Meriel was in the passenger seat, still in his shirt.
He came up through the crowd smiling, an arm out to take my bag.
"There she is. Long drive. She's tired."
[Everyone's watching. She'll have to make a scene now.]
I stepped around his arm and walked up to the fire.
"I finished my seven years," I said. "I'm claiming my Border Right."
The crowd went quiet.
Every wolf here knew what that was. One claim, made of your Alpha at this fire, that he can't refuse.
Everyone also knew what I was supposed to ask for.
The Luna rite, the one he'd put off for seven years. My name beside his.
Lorcan's smile came back, easy now.
[There it is. She's still mine.]
"I claim Cold Ford," I said.
Somebody laughed, then stopped.
Cold Ford was the old stone waystation at the river, on our east edge. It had been empty twelve years. The roof was half gone. Kids dared each other to sleep in it.
"Cold Ford," Lorcan said. "The ruin."
"The ruin, the stable, the smokehouse, and the land down to the water."
He laughed, short and disbelieving, and looked around for someone to laugh with him.
Nobody did.
"Mirren. Don't do this here."
[She's bluffing. She'll be back by morning.]
"Say it," I said. "In front of them. You can't refuse."
His jaw worked.
"Fine," he said at last. "It's yours. Enjoy the rats."
[One night in that place and she'll crawl home.]
I picked up my bag.
A dry hand caught my wrist.
The Keeper had come out of her chair. Up close she smelled of woodsmoke and old paper.
She pulled me away from the firelight, toward the dark side of the hall.
"You heard him," she said. "Didn't you? His words. Not his mood."
My mouth went dry. "How do you know that?"
"Because I've seen it twice in eighty years." Her pale eyes held mine. "A bond only talks out loud when it's dying, girl."
I looked back at the fire.
Lorcan had his arm around Meriel's shoulders, and he was watching me over her head.
[Look at me. Look back at me.]
"Can he hear me?" I asked.
The Keeper shook her head.
"It only runs one way at the end. To the one who's been bleeding." She let go of my wrist. "He'll never hear another thought of yours as long as he lives."
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