He Traded Me for Land, Now I Write the Rules novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Gate

At two in the morning Adeline walks Toby out past Damon's Beta and his new woman, then learns Everett filed Toby under his own name without asking.

Everett offered to come with me.

I said no, and he didn't ask twice.

He sent his driver and nothing else.

The Ashgate Pack House stood on a quiet block uptown, behind an iron fence with a guard booth.

It was ten to four in the morning.

Toby sat on the curb outside the gate with his hood up and his hands in his sleeves.

I was out of the car before it stopped.

"Addie." He stood and tried to grin. "I'm fine. It's only that my stuff is in there and I'm out here."

His left ear was bare. The hearing aid was in his fist.

I took him by both shoulders and looked at him.

"Did anyone touch you?"

"No. The guard just said no a lot."

The guard stood in the booth and didn't look at me.

"Open the gate," I said. "My brother lives here."

"He's not on the list, Miss Hartigan." He said it as if he were reading it off a card. "Your protection was withdrawn at midnight. His went with it."

"Then I'll take him out."

"That's your call. His things stay inside until someone with standing signs for them."

I knew the Beta's walk before I saw him.

Ned Garrity came down the path from the house, big and slow, with his jacket thrown on over a T-shirt.

He stopped on the other side of the bars.

"Adeline," Ned said.

"You filed it."

"I did what I was told."

He looked at the gravel.

Nobody in Ashgate looked me in the eye that night, and I understood why.

The front door opened again, and a woman came down the path in a man's white dress shirt and bare feet.

She was blond and pretty, with a face that looked kind even half asleep.

Under her arm she carried a black binder. It had yellow tabs sticking out of the edge.

I knew that binder. I had built it myself.

She stopped at the gate.

"You must be Adeline." She sounded embarrassed to be there. "I'm Camille. I'm so sorry about all this."

In her other hand was a gym bag.

"This is Toby's," Camille said. "I packed it myself. His charger's in the side pocket, and I put in his good jacket."

The guard opened the little gate beside the booth, and she passed the bag through to my brother.

"Thanks," Toby said, surprised.

"Don't mention it." Camille smiled at him, then at me. "Damon's asleep. I didn't want to wake him over a bag."

I looked at the binder.

"That's Damon's file," she said, following my eyes. "He asked me to keep it somewhere safe."

I said nothing about it.

I didn't know yet why it mattered, only that it was mine.

A light came on in an upstairs window, and a few moments later Damon came out onto the steps in a dark robe.

He didn't hurry.

"Addie."

He used the soft voice he saved for when I was upset.

"It's four in the morning. Bring him in, and I'll put him back on the list tonight."

"And me?"

"You know the answer."

"Say it."

"Come back inside. We'll talk about it in the morning." He spread his hands. "You're being dramatic."

I had been dramatic once in four years, when I cried at my mother's funeral.

"No," I said.

"Be sensible. You've got nowhere to take a sixteen-year-old."

"He's coming with me."

Damon looked at the car behind me, at the Greenwich plate, and his face went hard.

"You're sure you know what you're doing."

"I wrote it down," I said. "I know exactly."

I picked up the gym bag, put my hand on Toby's back, and walked him to the car.

Nobody stopped us.

I heard the gate click behind us.

In the back seat, Toby let his head fall against the window.

"That was so scary," he said. "I was great, though, right?"

"You were great."

He pulled out his phone and checked it, then gave me a strange look.

"Hey, Addie. The driver told me something while we were waiting for you."

"What?"

"He says Mr. Lyle filed me as his ward at ten past three." Toby turned the phone around, and the registry notice was on the screen. "So I'm on somebody's list now. Is that good?"

I read it twice.

Rule one said Toby's care was registered in my name, never an Alpha's.

I had written that rule, and Everett had signed it, and he had filed my brother under his own name before I'd even gotten into the car.

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