His Mate, His Enemy novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Three Nights

Pack law gives Corinna three nights, Lorcan posts guards to hold her, and she runs for the river line, where the enemy Alpha waits with a lantern.

By morning Lorcan was sitting on my porch step, and he hadn't slept.

I could feel that he hadn't.

The cut bond had left a raw thread between us, and every ache in his body ran down it into mine.

His cold hands. His dry mouth. The place behind his ribs that hurt every time he breathed.

I stepped around him with a laundry basket and went to the clinic.

"Corinna."

I didn't turn around.

"You still have a house here," he said. "You have the clinic. You have all of it. Nobody is putting you out."

"The law is," I said.

"Then I'll change the law."

"You can't change it by morning."

The elder was waiting outside the clinic door with her stick and her gray braid.

She didn't look at me when she spoke.

"Three nights, Corinna. A cut Luna leaves the territory by the third midnight. That's the old way."

"I know the old way."

"Lorcan has not signed the release."

"I know that too."

She finally looked at me, and I saw that she was sorry, and that it changed nothing.

I worked my shift anyway, because a pack child with a fever doesn't care whose bond is cut.

Brynn came in at noon.

She was wearing a loose sweater, her hair still damp, carrying a thermos in both hands.

"Ginger and honey," she said. "The way your mother made it."

She set it on the counter. Her eyes were red.

"I know you can't stand to look at me. I wouldn't ask. I only wanted you to have this."

I looked at the thermos.

I didn't touch it.

"How long, Brynn?"

"Cori."

"How long?"

She pressed her fingers to her mouth.

"One night. The night of the old beta's funeral, when everyone drank too much.

"I swear it was one night, and I never meant it to be anything."

"And then ten months of hugging me in the kitchen."

"I didn't know how to tell you."

She started to cry, quietly, with her shoulders shaking, and for one second I nearly reached for her.

Fifteen years of habit.

"I'll go to him," she said. "I'll make him see reason. He's out of his mind with it."

"Don't do me any favors."

"Please drink the tea," she said, and left it there.

That night the guards stood at the foot of my porch.

Two of them, young wolves I'd given vaccines to, who wouldn't meet my eyes.

I asked one what he was doing.

"The Alpha says you're not to leave the lodge grounds," he said, miserable. "Not until he's talked to you."

"The law gives me three nights," I said.

"If I stay past the third midnight, I'm a rogue on his land."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And a rogue on his land can be fetched back by any warrior he sends."

He didn't answer, and that was the answer.

Lorcan meant to do it.

He would let the law run out and then have me fetched.

I'd be a rogue on his land with no mate, no seat and no one to speak for me.

My only way out was a place where his word stopped.

I knew where that was.

My father had died there when I was twelve, over the river line on patrol.

Four men came back from that patrol instead of five.

I packed one bag.

I left the thermos on the counter, still full.

In the middle of the night I climbed out the bathroom window of the house where I'd lost my child.

I shifted in the trees behind the clinic.

Sable came up easily, glad to be let out.

She ran with her ears flat, along the lake path past the dock, and through the cold shallows at the bend.

Behind me the thread pulled hard.

Lorcan woke on the porch step and found my door open, and his panic ran down it into me.

He howled, a long raw note that went up and over the whole valley.

Lights came on all along the hill.

Boots. Dogs. The pack's horns.

I ran faster.

The ground rose toward the river line, where the old stone markers stood.

On the far side of them the trees grew taller and darker.

I broke through the last of the brush and stopped dead.

Someone was standing on the line itself.

A lean man in a canvas coat, with a bent nose and a lantern in one hand, watching me with pale eyes.

Behind him, in the dark, six more wolves waited.

"Cross it," Dane Kelleher said, "and Ironwood takes you in."

He lifted the lantern so I could see his face.

"My sister Molly has a bed made up. She says you'll want a bath first."

"Cross it, and Lorcan MacKinnon calls it war."

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