My Alpha's Regret Came Too Late novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Crossing

Mirren hides the packless family and faces down her old patrol, Emrys feeds them, and her Line sergeant Gwenna quits to join her; then Lorcan drives up with Meriel, plotting a jealous kiss.

I was in the water before I decided to be.

It was snowmelt cold. I waded out past my hips.

"Give him to me."

The woman held the boy tighter.

Her lips were blue. She smelled packless, thin and wild.

"I'm not Line," I said. "Not anymore. Give him to me, and hold your girl."

She looked at my face for one second too long.

Then she let him go.

The boy was maybe six and weighed nothing.

He had one boot on.

His other foot was bare and white with cold.

"Lost it," he whispered into my neck. "The river took it."

"The river can keep it. I'll find you a better one."

I got them up the bank and through the inn's front door, and I shoved the girl right up against the stove.

The searchlight swept the windows.

"Upstairs," I said. "Second door on the left has a ceiling. Don't come down till I call you."

The woman stopped on the bottom step.

"They'll take us back," she said. "They always take us back."

"They'll try."

I went out the front door and stood in the light.

The patrol truck came roaring down the east road.

Four wolves in Line jackets got out.

I knew every one.

The corporal in front had been my rookie.

"Captain?"

"Not anymore."

"We saw a crossing." He looked past me at the lit windows. "Commander's orders. Everybody goes back over the Line."

"I know the orders. I used to give them."

He swallowed. "Then you know I can't leave them here."

"They're inside my house, on my land." I didn't move. "You want them, you go through me. All four of you. Tonight. In front of each other."

Nobody moved.

The corporal's jaw tightened. "We're on the Line's road. We've got every right."

"You're on Highwater's road," said a voice behind them. "And nobody asked me."

Emrys came out of the dark by the well. Dressed this time, in a sheepskin coat and boots.

Three big Highwater wolves stood behind him.

"The Line drives Highwater roads by my leave," he said. "You don't have it tonight. Turn around."

"The commander will come himself," he said. "Without a charter, they're just strays on pack land. He'll have them over the Line inside a month."

"Then I'll get a charter."

He almost laughed. "From Ravensworth?"

He turned the truck around in the gravel and drove back up into the dark.

My hands were shaking in my pockets.

"Thanks," I said.

Emrys shrugged. "It's my road."

"You came down fast for a road."

"I saw the flare." He looked at the inn. "How many?"

"A mother and two kids. The boy lost a boot in the river."

He turned to one of his wolves.

"Tell the cook. Soup, bread, whatever she's got. And a pair of boots, boy's size."

The wolf ran.

Twenty minutes later a gray-haired woman with forearms like a blacksmith walked into my kitchen without knocking.

She set down chicken soup, three loaves of bread and a bag of children's clothes, and sniffed.

"You've been eating instant coffee."

"I've been here one day."

"One day too long." She turned to Emrys. "This one's too thin. I'll come back tomorrow."

She left.

"Your cook doesn't like me," I said.

"My cook likes you fine. That was friendly."

The kids ate three bowls each.

The girl fell asleep with bread in her hand.

The boy wore his new boots to bed.

The mother sat at my table with a mug and finally cried, silently, her face completely still.

I sat across from her and said nothing.

Emrys washed the pot.

Around midnight, headlights came down the west road from Ravensworth.

Every muscle in my back went tight.

Then a truck door slammed, and a voice I'd know through a mountain started swearing.

"Mirren Chesney, you lying sack of rocks, where are you?"

I opened the door.

Gwenna Gilchrist stood on my step with her wool hat on and a duffel bag in each hand.

Her Line jacket had raw threads where the patches used to be.

"You quit," I said.

"I quit." She pushed past me. "You left, and the new captain is a man who alphabetizes his socks. I lasted four days."

"Gwen."

"Don't 'Gwen' me. The corporal radioed in that you'd stolen a family off the river. I was already halfway here."

She looked Emrys up and down, slowly, from boots to beard.

"Who's the furniture?"

"Emrys Rushton. Highwater."

"Huh." She grinned, gap-toothed. "Does he come with the place?"

"He comes with the well."

Emrys dried the soup pot and set it on the shelf.

"I'm leaving," he said, with great dignity.

"Coward," Gwenna said happily.

After he'd gone, she stole a heel of bread.

"So what's the plan? Don't say you don't have one. You've got the face."

"A charter. Under the Accord."

She stopped chewing.

"A crossing house. A legal one." I said it out loud for the first time. "Where they can come in off the Line and the Line has to send them, instead of turning them back."

"That needs an Alpha's signature."

"I know."

"The Alpha whose land it's on."

"I know, Gwen."

She put the bread down.

"You're going to ask him for it. The one with the towel."

"You heard about the towel?"

"Everybody's heard about the towel."

Just after sunrise, a truck I knew came down the west road.

Lorcan's.

Meriel was in the passenger seat with her hand on his knee.

His thought got out of the truck before he did.

[Kiss Meriel in front of her. Then she'll come.]

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