Alpha Hayley's Destined Mate novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Guest Right

Hayley protects Torrey in front of the pack, fails to shift in her barn at 2 a.m., and watches her hauler and her car go up in flames.

I opened the door all the way and walked down the steps.

Torrey came out behind me with his shirt hanging open and two buttons missing.

There were maybe sixty of them now. Half the pack had come over from the grandstand and the parking lot.

Three wolves were already on four feet at the front. Tan and gray, hackles up, clothes torn on the clay behind them.

One was a kid who sweeps the bleachers for me. He was nineteen.

"Rydell blood on the river," Lon said. He stood at the front with the Charter under his arm. "And our Alpha brings the Ossler boy into her hauler and locks the door."

"Our Alpha" got a murmur. He'd said it like a joke.

"He came onto our land," someone shouted. "We got the right."

"You don't," I said.

I didn't use the voice yet.

I wanted them to hear me first.

"Torrey Ossler walked through my gate with his hands empty. He asked for nobody's blood. He's a guest on my track."

"He's a killer," Lon said gently. "You know it, honey. You woke up smelling of him."

"Then I'll be the one who proves it. Not a mob in my pit lot on a Saturday night."

I turned in a slow circle so every one of them could see my face.

"I'm granting him guest-right. My word on it. Anybody who touches him tonight touches me."

Nobody moved.

Guest-right is older than the Charter.

My great-great-grandfather gave it to a cattle buyer the night the buyer's horse went lame.

Nobody has broken it in this pack since.

The kid wolf at the front whined and backed up a step.

"Change back," I told him. "All three of you. Now."

That one carried the voice. It went through their spines.

They folded down onto the clay, and fur ran back into skin. The kid grabbed for his torn jeans, red to the ears.

"Clear a path to the gate," I said.

They did it slowly.

Some of them stared at Torrey the whole way.

He walked through them alone. He didn't hurry, and he didn't look down.

At the gate he stopped and turned.

"Thank you," he said, to me and nobody else.

"Don't thank me. Leave."

His truck was an old black Ford parked by the fence. He climbed in and drove away down the canyon road.

My scars cooled the further he went. I hated that I noticed.

Lon closed the Charter with a soft clap.

He was smiling. He gave me a little nod.

Then he put his arm around Cleve's shoulders and walked him to the Cadillac.

At two in the morning I was standing naked in my own barn.

The house is my father's old board-and-batten place on the river, a mile above the track.

The barn hasn't held a horse in ten years, and it's where I go to try.

Myra sat on a hay bale with a flashlight and a can of root beer.

"You don't have to do this tonight," she said.

"I have four weeks."

"I know how long four weeks is, Hay. I can count."

I closed my eyes. I breathed the way my father taught me when I was sixteen.

Go down into the belly and let the wolf up through the ribs.

Don't fight her, and open the door.

I could feel the door. I always can.

I pushed.

My spine ached.

My jaw ached.

My fingertips burned.

Then the river came.

The sound of it, roaring in the dark, cold up to my chin and then over my head.

Black water filled my nose.

My father's voice cut off in the middle of my name.

I was on my knees in the straw, coughing.

Nothing had changed, not a hair and not a nail.

Myra was on the floor beside me with her arms around me before I knew she'd moved.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. I've got you."

"He knew," I said into her shoulder. "Ossler. He looked at me and he knew."

"Well, screw him."

"He said my wolf's under ice."

"Screw him twice."

I laughed, and it turned into something else, and she held on while it did.

She smelled like root beer and my pit road. Like every Saturday night since kindergarten.

"I'm not letting Cleve kill you," she said. "I'll bite him myself. I'll get my teeth right in his stupid neck."

"You're a sweetheart, Myra."

"I'm a crew chief. Nobody wrecks my car."

I pulled my T-shirt on. She handed me my jeans.

We walked out of the barn into the cold.

The canyon was black and the stars were sharp over the ridge.

Except to the west, down by the track, where the sky had gone orange.

I stood still.

The glow was low and moving. Smoke rose through it, lit from underneath.

"Hayley," Myra said. "That's the pit lot."

I ran for my truck.

From the bend in the road you can see the whole flat. I braked hard there and got out.

My hauler was burning.

Flames came out of the side door in a sheet. The roof had already started to buckle.

Inside it, through the open back ramp, I could see the shape of the #03.

It wore my father's number.

The paint was blistering off it in black curls.

And out on the canyon road, heading away from the track with no headlights on, a pickup turned under the one streetlight.

I knew that truck. Everybody in the pack knew that truck.

It was Cleve's.

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