Chapter 5: The Wrist Test

Saturday night was pack supper, and I went.

Pearl didn't want me to.

"Stay home, honey," she said. "Let them swallow it in private."

"If I stay home, they'll tell it their way."

She looked at me for a long moment, then took her own coat off the hook.

"Then I'm sitting beside you."

The pack hall smelled of roast beef and woodsmoke, and it went quiet when we walked in.

Two hundred people stared at me over their plates.

I took a seat at the long table, and Pearl sat beside me and loaded my plate.

Across the room, Cade sat at the elders' table with his mother.

Mirabel sat at his elbow in a green dress with a hand on her stomach.

Cade's mother tapped her glass with a fork.

The hall settled.

"Before supper," she said, "we have an announcement."

I put down my fork.

"Cade has chosen Mirabel before this pack," she said. "He will claim her at the Blood Moon, with my blessing, and the pack's, I hope."

A ripple of clapping went through the room.

Mirabel stood up and smiled shyly around the hall.

"Thank you," she said. "I know the timing is hard. But when you meet your fated mate, you can't fight it."

She turned and looked straight at me.

"Cade is my fated mate. I knew it the first night we met."

A murmur ran from table to table.

Pearl's hand closed on my wrist under the tablecloth.

"Don't," she whispered.

I stood up.

The scrape of my chair was loud in the quiet.

"Congratulations," I said, and my voice carried. "I have one question."

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