Alpha Hayley's Destined Mate novel · Chapter 6 of 32
Chapter 6: The Den
Torrey was asleep on a sprung couch in the shop office with one arm over his eyes.
I threw the watch at him.
It hit him in the chest. He was on his feet before it landed on the floor.
"Where did you get that?"
He looked at it, and then at me.
He didn't pretend not to understand.
"Sit down, Hayley."
"Where did you get my father's watch?"
"From the grey's den. Six weeks ago."
"Six weeks."
"I found the den in August. He hasn't been back to it since spring." He picked up the watch and held it out to me on his flat palm. "I was going to bring it to you. I drove halfway down the mountain twice."
"And?"
"And I didn't know how to hand a woman her dead father's watch when she thinks I'm the one who killed him."
I took it. My hand was shaking.
The second hand still moved. Somebody had wound it.
"You wound it," I said.
"It seemed wrong to let it stop."
I put it on my own wrist and pulled the band to the last hole.
"Show me," I said.
We left at first light in his truck, while Roddy was still firing up the plasma cutter.
The road went down the back of the Greenhorns into dry hills, live oaks and yellow grass and rock.
It was nobody's land, not his pack's and not mine.
He parked at a cattle gate and we walked.
"How'd you find it?" I asked.
"Followed the stink."
"Charming."
"You'll see."
I smelled it a quarter mile out, rot and old blood and wet dog.
The den was a cleft under a rock shelf, half hidden by a fallen oak. You had to crawl to get in.
Torrey went first. I went after him.
Inside it opened up into a low cave the size of my kitchen.
The floor was bones of deer and calves and a coyote.
Something bigger lay there too, and I didn't look at it for long.
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