The Alpha I Inherited

ed and her grey hair still in its night braid. She loo

he said. "It belonged to your grandmo

new,"

e pot, poured the sludge into the sink, and set about making a fresh one. "I knew before your husband did

th with his back to the window, and Mabel brought t

the spring

it has one water source that matters, a spring in the deep shaft that flows for a shifted wolf and no one else. Two winters ago it began to slow. Last month it stopped for eleve

e," I said

was no Alpha strong enough to hold the road. He controls the trucks and the foo

her was the Alph

de, and she still held the valley by law and by name. Nobody could take it from her while she lived."

d for this town. I went to church with these people. I never heard one word about a pack or a spring o

said. "There is

to

ember the summer you were seven and you came back from the woods behin

remember finding a stra

d you home herself and cleaned you up and made every one of us swear to keep it quiet. She said your mother had already lost one child to this valle

r the fog truck on Mill Street, gears grinding as i

t a wolf

een a sleeping one. The wolf is t

d the plates clattered, and I hated that both of them could see it. "I do not want a pack. I do not want a spring. I do not want a woman I have neve

opped halfway

ches th

. I thought he was checking for burglars." I put the la

is men on it and the mine office locked, and he is telling everyone that until the claim is settled the valley belongs to no one and nobody eats. There are eleven families down the

almost closed, and the way Andrew had got

aid slowly, "what h

ything. I am not asking you to sleep in the pack house or

a noise in

und to hold the road, because the road runs through my territory and my territory would be yours by bond. It buys the vall

siness arrang

r and I want my pack fed. The bond does not req

f I re

ng in the mining company to buy this valley out from under eleven families. He wi

nter and stood over h

elling me that the only thing standing between my neighbo

my eyes. "I do not like this either, Miss Calloway.

ollar of his shirt, and there was a pale mark ther

did not want him. She broke the bond in a ritual and it

k I would

ry. I am telling you what it costs so

ome in hungry at seven and they will ask why the road is closed, and I am going to tell

fore came in, big and red-haired and broad, and he

t enough to rattl

"He says if she is going to be Alpha, she can come and say it to his face before the

k over the counter.