Too Old for My Alpha, Worth the Wait for His Rival novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Gate

Catriona leaves her pendant on the gatepost and keeps her father's ring; her younger daughter chooses to stay, and Braden promises she'll be back by the first snow. Alexander's truck waits on the road.

On the night of the new moon I walked to the front gate of Cedar Fork carrying two duffel bags.

That was the law.

Only what I could carry.

Eliza walked beside me with a third bag over her shoulder, because she was nineteen and the law could not stop her from leaving.

The whole pack had come out to watch.

Some of them stood near the gate with their arms crossed and their eyes on the ground.

Some of them stood far back by the lodge, where Braden could not see who came close.

I had taught half of them to breathe through a contraction.

I set my bags down at the gatepost and took off the Luna's pendant, the silver wolf on a chain that every Luna of Cedar Fork had worn for sixty years.

I hung it on the post.

It swung and settled.

"Catriona."

Jolene came down the steps of the lodge in a long cream coat with her hand on her belly and Braden one step behind her.

"The ring," she said. "The old gold one on your right hand. That belongs to the Luna."

I looked down at it.

It was wide and plain and worn smooth on one side, and the inside was cut with my father's name.

Amos Cedarquist.

"It's my father's ring," I said. "He made this pack. It goes to his blood."

"It goes with the title," Jolene said, and she looked back at Braden.

Braden did not answer for a moment.

He looked at the ring, not at me, and his jaw moved.

"Let her keep it," he said at last. "It's an old man's ring, Jolene. It isn't worth the scene."

That was strange, and I filed it away.

I turned to face the pack.

"There are three women carrying this winter that I know of," I said, loud enough for the back rows. "Their charts are in the clinic, in the blue drawer."

"The key is under the third step."

"Whoever the new healer is, she'll need that drawer."

Nobody said a word.

Jolene's cheeks went pink.

Then I saw my younger daughter standing at Braden's left side in her school coat, with her hands in her pockets and her jaw set exactly like mine.

I crossed the gravel to her.

Braden's arm came up to stop me, and Eliza said very quietly, "Dad, don't," and he stopped.

"Sweetheart," I said.

"I know the law, Mom."

"You don't have to stay. We'll find a way."

"There isn't one yet." She kept her voice low and flat. "If I leave, he'll say I abandoned the pack and make it worse for you at the Moot."

"I'm sixteen. I can sit at his table and keep my eyes open."

I put my hand against her cheek.

"What do you need me to do?"

"Don't cry," she said. "If you cry in front of them, they win."

"I'm not crying."

"You are, a little. Wait until the road."

I laughed, and it broke in the middle.

"Any hour," I told her. "Any night, you walk north and I will open the door."

"I know."

She hugged me hard and fast, and then she stepped back to Braden's side and looked straight ahead.

I picked up my bags.

Behind me I heard Braden's voice, easy and certain.

"You'll be back by the first snow, Catriona."

I did not turn around.

"The first snow comes in six weeks. You'll want your own bed."

"Goodbye, Braden," I said.

The gate stood open, and the road beyond it ran dark between the pines.

I walked through it.

Eliza fell in beside me, and neither of us spoke until the lodge lights were small behind us.

Then I heard an engine idling ahead.

A black truck sat at the side of the road with its lights off, and a tall man leaned against the hood in the dark.

I stopped.

"Eliza," I said.

"I called the number on the card," my daughter said.

She did not even have the grace to look sorry.

"Mom, I'm not letting you sleep in a ditch."

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