Fate Picked Me, the Alpha Passed, and I Felt Nothing novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Chair's Notice

The pack hall held seventy-four wolves on folding chairs, and I stood against the back wall with my arms crossed.

It was Sunday, two o'clock, the eighteenth of October.

Rain ticked on the tin roof.

Nobody had asked me to sit, and I would not have if they had.

Dray sat at the front table with Joss on his left.

He wore the navy coat with the sleeves pushed up and he did not look at the room.

He looked at his hands.

I knew he could feel me standing behind him, because he had told me so that morning with his face in my neck.

Garland Hume stood at the lectern in his tweed jacket with the leather elbow patches.

He had silver hair combed straight back and a voice.

"Friends," he said. "I take no pleasure in this."

A few people shifted in their seats.

"Nine years ago we put a grieving son in the Alpha's chair, and he has served us well. I say that first, because it is true."

He let it sit.

"On the third of this month, our Alpha refused his fated mate before this pack. Our law allows it. The cut was made. But I have read the old record, and I must tell you what the record says."

He took out a folded paper and did not look at it.

"A refuser who lives with an unanswered bond grows sick. First he cannot sleep. Then he cannot eat. By the turn of the year, he is no longer a man at all. He is a wolf with no door in his head, and he will hurt whoever stands nearest."

The room went quiet in a bad way.

I felt it in my teeth.

"I am not asking you to hate him," Hume said, gentle as a priest. "I am asking you to ask yourselves whether we should wait until January to find out."

Somebody near me whispered, "He hasn't slept."

Somebody else said, "I saw him at the bakery at five in the morning. He looked like a ghost."

Hume nodded.

"The vote is the first Saturday of November. Come with your own heads."

He sat down.

It had taken him four minutes.

I looked at Dray's back.

He had not moved at all.

Joss stood up, huge in his flannel with the torn sleeves, and said that the Alpha would answer.

Dray got to his feet slowly.

He turned and faced the room.

His eyes went across seventy faces, and I watched them reach the back wall and stop on me.

He took a breath.

"I refused her because I was afraid," he said. "That part is true, and I have said it. If you vote me out, I will go quietly. If you don't, I'll earn the chair again."

That was all.

He sat down.

Nobody clapped.

I stayed where I was, standing, and every head that turned to look at the carpenter at the back wall got my steadiest stare.

Hume's pale eyes found me last.

He smiled at me, small and pleasant, like a man who has seen a card turn over.

Then he went to shake hands with the council.

I did not sit.

The keeper's words came back to me and I held them in my mouth.

When it does the most good.

Not today.

Not for a room that wanted a sad story.

I drove out to the Point in the rain with my wipers going.

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