Four Best Friends Forgot I Exist for the New Girl, Bless Their Hearts, I Forgot Them While I Glow Up novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Brunch

At the graduation brunch Devon asks Dane in front of the whole pack to show the message saying she was sick; he muted the chat, Brianna smooths it over, and when Devon asks Vernon for her release he steers her into the hall and says she does not release from this pack, not this year.

I walked into the packhouse hall at five past ten with dirt on my shoes and mountain wind still in my hair.

Eighty wolves were eating pancakes under a banner that said CONGRATULATIONS GRADUATES.

The talking stopped in the middle of the room and spread outward.

At the head table sat Vernon Overton, the Alpha, with his big warm hands folded on the cloth.

Dane sat on his right.

Emmett sat beside him, and the two cousins sat beside Emmett, and Brianna had pulled a chair in at the end and was already holding a mug.

She waved at me.

On her middle finger was a thin silver ring I had seen somewhere before and couldn't place.

"There she is!" Dane stood up smiling. He has had that easy smile since we were six. "Feeling better, Dev?"

I walked the length of the hall.

Nobody ate.

"Show me the message," I said.

"What message?"

"The one you sent at 3:02 this morning. The one that says I'm sick."

His smile held for a second longer than it should have.

Then he took out his phone and looked at it, and I watched him read his own name above those words.

"I don't remember writing that," he said.

"It was a mix-up," Brianna said gently from the end of the table. "I told her, Dane. Everybody was tired."

"I'm asking Dane."

"Dev." One of the cousins put down his fork. "It's not that deep. You've been saying you were tired all week."

"I said it once. On Tuesday."

"So we figured."

"You figured." I looked at Dane. "I texted the group at ten past four. I said I was on the steps."

"I muted that chat at midnight," Dane said. "I wanted to sleep."

Somebody at the back of the hall set a cup down very carefully.

The baker's wife was standing by the coffee urn with her arms folded.

She looked at Dane for a long time, and then she looked at the floor.

"Four hours," I said.

"You could have called."

"I could have called." I said it back to him slowly. "I was sitting right there, Dane. You could have come out the front door."

Dane's face went a dark red.

He opened his mouth and nothing came.

Emmett was staring at his plate.

He is a broad man who takes up a whole bench, and he had pulled his shoulders in.

"That's enough, now." Vernon stood.

He did it without hurry, and the whole hall sat up with him.

"This is a morning for celebrating," he said. "We've got graduates. We've got a dawn run that went well and a misunderstanding that's nobody's fault. Dev, sweetheart, you're tired. Sit down and eat."

He had said sweetheart to me every day for sixteen years.

I looked at the empty chair he was pointing at, three seats down from Dane.

It was the chair I had sat in for every meal of my life.

"No, thank you," I said.

"Dev."

"I've been in this house since I was six, Vernon. I'm twenty-two. I'm asking for my release."

The silence changed.

A pack wolf can ask an Alpha to let them go.

It is old law, and in Highridge nobody has used it in my lifetime.

Brianna put her mug down.

"Dev, you don't mean that," she said. "You're upset. You'll be so sorry tomorrow."

"I'm not talking to you."

"I'm only trying to help."

"I know you are," I said, and I didn't look at her.

Vernon crossed the room and put one hand on my shoulder.

He steered me out through the side door into the hallway as easily as he had steered me through every door since I was a child.

The door swung shut behind us and the hall noise came back in a rush.

He smiled down at me.

His hand stayed on my shoulder, and it was heavier than I remembered.

"You don't release from this pack, Dev," Vernon said. "Not this year."

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