The Wolf Who Saved Me Makes Other Alphas Submit. I'm Human. novel · Chapter 3 of 48

Chapter 3: Terms

Hearthside wolves corner Mara at her flat, one kneels to her, and she agrees to repay the debt on her own terms.

Dewitt opened the east wing with a keycard that shook in his hand.

Behind the keypad door were six beds in a windowless room.

Three of them held old Lycans, asleep with their mouths open and a drip in every arm.

The bag on the hook was brown, and it smelled of wolfsbane.

I photographed every bed, every bag, and every wrist band, and I called Joanne with my other hand.

"Send the state inspectors," I said. "And send them now."

"Mara, what's in there?"

"Our whole case."

Anselm wasn't in any of the beds.

Ronan stood at the door the entire time and said nothing.

When I put the phone down, he turned and walked out.

I followed him, because he was the only person in that building I didn't mind being alone with.

In the lot, he stopped beside the black pickup and looked at the cracked headlight.

"That's the one," I said.

"I know."

"You knew before I told you. You said, tell them about the headlight."

"Yes."

"How?"

He didn't answer. He opened my rental's door for me.

"Go home, Mara. Lock the door. I'll come tonight."

"You'll come tonight to do what?"

"Explain the debt."

"I haven't agreed to a debt."

"You don't have to agree," he said. "It's already written."

He shut the door on that.

By the time I had my seatbelt on, he had walked off across the gravel and out of sight.

My flat is above a laundromat on Pine Street.

I got there at five and wrote up the east wing for Joanne.

By six I'd eaten a bowl of dry cereal standing at the counter.

At seven, someone knocked on the stairwell door.

It wasn't Ronan's knock, though I couldn't have said how I knew that.

I looked through the peephole.

Two men stood on the landing in matching canvas jackets.

They had heavy shoulders and flat eyes, and one of them held a cut length of rope.

I took my phone out of my cardigan, dialed 911, and held my thumb over the button.

"Ms. Linwood," the taller one said through the door. "Mr. Faulk wants a word."

"Mr. Faulk can make an appointment."

"It's a short word."

"No."

The door frame creaked.

I stepped back from it, and I saw that my hand was shaking.

The lock held for one second. Then the frame split, and the door swung in, and both men came through it.

The tall one got a hand around my arm and I kicked his shin as hard as I could, and it did nothing at all.

"Easy," he said. "Don't make this harder."

The second man grabbed the rope off his belt.

"Ronan Draycott," I said.

I don't know why I said it. It was the only name in my head.

The one with the rope stopped.

"Say that again," he said.

"Ronan Draycott knows I'm here. He's on his way."

The tall man's hand left my arm.

"She's got his scent on her," he whispered.

"No, she's got something else," the one with the rope said. His voice cracked. "Look at her."

I did not know what I was supposed to be looked at for.

I was five foot four, in socks, with a phone.

The tall man took one step back into the doorframe.

Then he went down on one knee on my kitchen floor, with his head bowed, and he stayed there.

"Forgive me," he said. He wasn't talking to the air.

He was talking to me.

The man with the rope bolted down the stairs so fast I heard him fall twice before the street door banged.

I stood in my own apartment and stared at a grown Alpha's man who was trembling on my linoleum.

"Get up," I said.

"Yes," he said, and he got up.

"Get out."

He went out the way he'd come, backward, with his eyes on the floor.

I shut the broken door and leaned a chair against it.

Then I sat down on the floor myself.

Ten minutes later Ronan came up the stairs without any hurry, and found me there.

He took in the door, the chair, the rope on the landing, and my face.

"Who touched you?"

"The tall one grabbed my arm. I kicked him. It didn't help."

"It never helps." Something in his jaw eased, and then it set again. "He knelt."

"He knelt to me."

"I know."

"Why?"

"Because he's afraid of me," Ronan said, too quickly. "You were using my name."

I looked at him for a long moment.

I had been a caseworker for six years, and I know the sound of a man answering a question I didn't ask.

"That's not what it looked like."

"It's what it was."

"Fine," I said. "Now explain the debt."

He crouched in front of me so our eyes were level.

"The law is older than this town," he said. "A wolf who saves a life is owed that life, to guard and to use."

"And?"

"Until I name it paid, you stay inside my protection, on my land, where Faulk can't send men up your stairs."

"For how long?"

"Until he's finished."

"I have a job."

"Keep it."

"I have a case."

"Work it from my house."

"I'm not moving in with a man I've met twice."

"Three times," he said.

I almost laughed.

"My terms, then," I said, and I held up my fingers.

"I get my own room, with a lock, and you don't have the key. You don't touch me. Thirty days."

"And?"

"I keep working Anselm's case, and you don't get a vote."

His green eyes went over my face.

"Thirty days," he said. "Agreed."

"You didn't argue."

"You didn't ask for anything I didn't plan to give."

I got to my feet and packed a bag.

When I carried it down to the street, a station wagon was idling at the curb with its hazard lights on.

A man in an apron was leaning on the hood with a foil-covered dish in both hands.

"Hi!" he said, and he had never looked more worried. "I'm Abel. I brought dinner. Please tell me you like lasagna."

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