Don't Touch Him! He's Not An Alpha, He's My Patient novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Not Coming Home

I looked at my brother for a long time.

He'd asked it.

"No," I said.

His shoulders dropped.

"You didn't even think about it."

"I thought about it for five years, Ansel. Every night at Hollow Pine."

"I thought about what I'd say if any of you ever asked me home."

"And it was no?"

"It was always no. I just didn't know it until you asked."

He nodded slowly.

"The kid with the arm's going to cry."

"He'll be fine. Give him to the old pack mother. She's a better healer than Tilly ever pretended to be."

Ansel almost smiled.

"You'll tell them yourself? At the fire?"

"I'll tell them myself."

The elders' fire burned high on the lakeshore the next night.

All of Stonemere stood around the ring of flat stones.

The Council Alphas watched from the edge of the firelight, and Ridgeback with them.

Dad sat on the Alpha's stone for the last time.

He didn't know it yet.

Or maybe he did, because he wouldn't look at anyone.

Mom stood behind him without her shawl.

She hadn't slept either.

Tilly's heart had steadied that afternoon, and Mom had taken her down to the packhouse to feed her in her own room.

The old pack mother with the white braid stood up.

"Stonemere votes the old way," she said. "Stand behind the one you want."

For a moment nobody moved.

Then the young warrior with the healed arm walked across the ring and stood behind Ansel.

Then his two friends.

Then the pack mothers, all of them at once, in a rustle of wool.

Then the warriors.

It went on until sixty wolves stood at my brother's back.

My father sat alone on his stone, with my mother behind him.

Dad looked at them a long time.

Then he got up off the Alpha's stone.

He was a big man, and he got up.

Ansel didn't sit down in his place.

He stood beside it and turned to me.

"Stonemere wants a Luna who isn't Mom," he said, loud enough for everyone. "They asked for my sister."

Every face around the fire turned to me.

I stepped into the light.

"Thank you," I said. "I mean it. Some of you taught me to swim. Some of you taught me to set a bone."

"But I have a pack. It's small and poor and five hours east."

"It took me in with my boots worn through, and it made me its Luna."

I touched the silver pine cone on my coat.

"I'm going home to it."

Nobody argued.

The old pack mother nodded.

Dad stopped beside me on his way out of the ring.

"You got what you wanted," he said.

"I wanted you to believe me about the cat, Dad. That's all I ever wanted."

His jaw moved.

He walked off into the dark, and Mom followed him without looking at me.

Wylie found my hand.

We climbed the hill in silence, and Arlene didn't follow us.

The cottage was empty for the first time in days.

The bed by the hearth was stripped where Tilly had lain.

Wylie went up the ladder ahead of me and opened the little window under the eaves.

The moon came in, one night past full, still huge and bright.

He sat on Gran's old mattress and looked up at me.

"The Council said your mark wouldn't count," he said. "Inside a month."

"I remember."

"There's nothing left for it to stop. No claim. No sister. No moon."

"I know."

"So it wouldn't be medicine. It'd just be you and me."

I knelt in front of him on the mattress.

"Ask me again," I said.

He took my face in his hands.

"Freja Pellam. Mark me. Not because I'm dying. Because I'm not."

"And you'll mark me back."

His eyes went amber in the moonlight.

"I've wanted to since you shoved that shirt box back at your sister."

"That was five days ago."

"It was a very good shove."

I laughed and pulled him down onto the mattress by his shirt.

He fell onto me laughing, and I wrapped my legs around his hips before he could catch his weight.

The wool blanket was rough under my back, and the moonlight turned his face to sharp silver planes.

He propped himself on his forearms and looked down at me.

"Two weeks ago I couldn't feel the cold," he said. "Now I can feel the floorboards through the mattress and you under me and the moon on my neck."

"Good."

"That's all you've got?"

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