My Alpha's Regret Came Too Late novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Cold Ford

At the ruined waystation the Highwater Alpha, Emrys, claims the well and the road, and Mirren laughs at her ex's thoughts; then a Line flare goes up and a woman wades the ford with two children.

My truck was still parked at the foot of his drive.

I walked back up the hill in the dark and didn't look at the house once.

The porch light was on. So was the master bedroom.

[She'll knock. Give it ten minutes.]

I started the engine and drove east.

Cold Ford was forty minutes out, at the end of a gravel road nobody had graded in twelve years.

My headlights found it all at once.

It was two stories of gray river stone.

There was a stable with its doors hanging, a smokehouse, and a carpenter's shed leaning on its woodpile.

Half the inn's roof was gone. The rafters stood up against the stars.

Below it all, the river ran wide and shallow over stones, loud in the dark.

I shut off the engine and sat there.

I put the seat back, pulled my Line jacket over me, and slept with my boots on.

Habit.

Something woke me at dawn.

It wasn't a sound.

It was the feeling of being looked at by something big.

I sat up slowly.

There was a wolf on the far bank of the river.

He was black from nose to tail and bigger than any wolf I had turned back in seven years on the Line.

He stood in the shallows with water to his knees, watching my truck.

I rolled down the window.

"If you're waiting for me to get out and run," I called, "I just did a seven-year tour. I don't run before coffee."

The wolf looked at me a moment longer.

Then he waded across.

On my bank he shook himself once, and the shake ran on too long, and then a man was standing there instead.

A very large naked man, dripping river water, scratching his beard.

I'd seen a thousand shifts. I kept my eyes on his face, mostly.

He had short black hair, a crooked nose, and a stare that made rookies confess things.

"You're on the well," he said.

"I'm parked next to the well."

"The well's mine."

"The well's thirty feet from my front door."

"It's on the Highwater side of the old survey line. So's the east road." He tipped his head at the gravel track that ran from the ford up into the hills. "I've graded it for six years."

"And you are?"

"Emrys Rushton."

Every wolf on the Line knew that name. The Highwater Alpha, who'd been packless once.

"Mirren Chesney," I said. "I own this ruin as of last night. You want to talk property lines, maybe put pants on first."

He looked down at himself.

"My clothes are on the other bank."

"That sounds like a planning problem."

The corner of his mouth moved.

It wasn't a smile.

It was the place one would go if he had them.

"I heard Ravensworth gave Cold Ford away at the fire," he said. "I heard it went to a Line captain."

"News travels."

"The cook at Highwater has a cousin with a big mouth." He looked past me at the broken roof. "What do you want with it?"

"I haven't decided."

"That's a lie."

"It's eight in the morning. I'm allowed one."

He walked to the well, worked the old iron pump handle three times, and water came out clear.

"I fixed this," he said. "Four years ago. Nobody asked me to."

"Is this the part where I thank you?"

"It's the part where you know it works."

Then it came, faint and smug.

[Bet she cried all night. She'll call by noon.]

I laughed out loud.

I couldn't help it. It came up from my stomach and I had to put a hand on the truck.

Emrys stared at me.

"Something funny about my well?"

"No." I wiped my eyes. "Somebody just told me I cried all night."

He looked around the empty riverbank.

"Who?"

"Long story."

"I've got time. I've got no pants."

That set me off again.

He waited it out, dripping, perfectly serious.

When I finally stopped, he nodded at the inn.

"There's a cast-iron stove in the kitchen. Flue's clear. Wood in the shed is dry if you go to the back of the stack."

"You checked the flue."

"Every fall."

"For a building that isn't yours."

"Somebody had to." He turned toward the water. "Don't drink from the river below the ford. Highwater's sheep."

He waded in.

Halfway across he shifted, and the black wolf climbed the far bank and vanished into the pines without looking back.

I spent the day on the inn.

I swept out mouse nests and glass.

Six rooms upstairs, two with ceilings.

The stove drew like he'd said.

At noon my phone stayed quiet.

[She'll call. Any minute.]

At three it was still quiet.

[Fine. Let her sulk in the rats.]

By dusk I had a clean kitchen, a cot and a pot of instant coffee.

I sat on the front step and watched the river turn copper.

Then a red light went up over the eastern hills.

A Line flare. I knew it in my body before my brain caught up.

Somebody was crossing.

A white beam swung down from the ridge behind it. The patrol's searchlight, hunting the water.

It found her in the middle of the ford.

A woman, up to her waist in the current, carrying a little boy on her hip.

A girl of maybe nine held the back of her coat with both fists.

The light pinned them there.

The woman looked straight up the bank at me.

She didn't call for help.

She just kept wading.

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