The Alpha I Inherited

listened to the last of them, a boy laughing somewhere near the church, and then the

me to stay?

N

went down the steps and across the lane and I he

where upstairs a shutter knocked against the siding and I did not go up to fix it. I sat in the chair by the bed and untied the stri

ot bring you home for it because it was not safe. You have a wolf and she will wake when she is ready. Until then, be

years. She had never once said what was not safe. And she had signed each letter the same way, with a small drawn crescent, and on the last one, dated two

a basket of eggs and a loaf of bread and a h

id. "She wrote that in her las

nd he was wearing a different jacket, brown canvas instead of leather, and there was dust on hi

to ask from a woman you

ose and the sill in the back room is rotting. If I am going to be in th

o be in this hou

not been aired since the war, and a mine full of pack records

that

anything that is yours. I will not read the letters. I will fix the shutter and the sill and I will carr

t was filmed with dust, and when he set the hammer down and took hold of the shutter to li

down at the gate arguing

He will be gone three days, and I would rather spend

he pin. His hands were quick and sure and there wa

hutter and he reached past me for the hammer. His arm brushed mine

ing in my sunl

m

u a

hen he turned and looked at me, and there was a moment when neither o

o hold," I said. "Yo

pulled up at the corner and made him look younger and much less careful. "You are going to tell me it will not, and I am going to come back w

alling

should I

and then you go back to Miss Calloway when you are

at me for a long moment. "Neither one is the real me

ot want to kn

The bread is from Mabel and she told me to tell you that if you do not ea

ched him, and the truth was that I did not want him to leave. That was the trouble. The truth was that I had felt the warmth of his arm through my sleeve and I h

t the back door and stood on

ad

rotting sill with th

the spring b

s. I told

has Sila

whether my pack would take in his people if the valley failed." Wade set the pry

d the row of houses, and then at the ridge abov

tomorrow," I said. "I want t