Claimed by the Alpha I Hate novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Gate
Two years later Daisy brings her mother's coffin to the north gate and finds the Warden who sealed her break is now the Alpha.
It was two years to the week since the circle, and I was driving my mother's coffin up the Ridgeback road.
She had died eleven days earlier in a rented apartment in Missoula, with a window open because she liked to hear traffic.
Her will was one page long and said she wanted to lie on the ridge beside my father.
Pack land is closed to anyone who was ever broken from it.
I had decided I would go through that gate even if I had to drive through it.
The truck belonged to a man from my job at the feed store, and the coffin rode in the bed under a blue tarp.
At the north gate two wolves in orange vests stepped into my headlights.
One of them was a boy I had known in school, and he looked at my face and then looked at the ground.
"Daisy," he said.
"I'm not allowed to open it for you."
"I'm not asking for me," I said.
"My mother is in the truck."
His face changed.
"Sybil?"
"She wants to be buried on the ridge.
"Next to my dad."
The other guard, an older man, said, "That needs the Alpha's word."
"Then get him," I said.
"I'll wait."
I turned the engine off and sat with my hands on the wheel.
My left wrist ached under my sleeve.
It had ached since I crossed the county line, and I told myself it was grief.
A man walked out of the dark on foot, with no jacket and no hurry.
He wore a grey wool coat over his arm, and a black leather cuff on his left wrist.
I knew the scar through his eyebrow before I saw his face.
I got out of the truck and my knees nearly went, and I locked them.
"You," I said.
"Daisy Pennick," said the Warden, and then he shook his head.
"Alpha now.
"Nolan Brandvold.
"Jarek lost the seat to me fourteen months ago."
"You sealed it."
I had rehearsed that line for two years, and it came out smaller than it was in my head.
"You stood in that circle and sealed it like you were stamping a library book."
"You told me to," he said.
I stared at him.
He did not flinch, and he did not look sorry for himself either.
He looked tired, and he looked at the blue tarp.
"That's not an excuse," he said.
"It's what happened.
"I'm sorry about your mother."
"Don't," I said.
"Don't be sorry in that voice."
"What voice?"
"The one you use on people who are about to be eaten," I said.
The corner of his mouth moved, just slightly, and I hated that it did.
"She asked for the ridge," I said.
"I'm not here to fight you.
"I want the gate open, and I want you to say yes."
"Yes," he said.
I had been ready for a fight, and the word knocked me off balance.
"Just like that?"
"Just like that.
"Pack law gives you one condition, and I didn't write it.
"The family keeps vigil the night before a burial, under the Alpha's roof.
"The lodge has a guest room."
"Under your roof."
"Under the roof of whoever holds the seat," he said.
"If you want, I'll sleep in the barn."
I thought about the rented apartment, and the empty road behind me, and the eleven days.
"Fine," I said.
"One night.
"We bury her at dawn."
"At dawn," he said, and he stepped to the back of the truck.
He pulled the tarp off the coffin, and he did it gently.
"Gate," he said to the guards, without turning his head, and the chain rattled up.
I climbed into the bed on the opposite side.
We each took a handle.
The wood was light, because she had been so thin at the end.
"On three," he said.
"I've carried a coffin before," I said.
"I know," said Nolan.
We lifted together, and his bare fingers closed on the brass handle an inch from mine.
My scar went off like a lit match.
The heat ran up my arm to the elbow, and it was not grief.
I looked up, and he had gone white around the mouth.
He was staring straight at my wrist, and then at the leather on his own.
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