I Don't Come Back to My Alpha Again novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Chosen

Tobin stared at him.

"You're asking me," he said. "For permission."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because you're her family." Beck picked a splinter out of his palm. "And because nobody asked her, the first time. Somebody should get asked."

Tobin looked down at the woodpile for a long time.

I held my breath at the window.

"She cheats at chess," Tobin said finally.

"I know."

"She burns the first grilled cheese every single time."

"I know. I eat that one."

"She talks in her sleep. Rhoda told me. In the caves she used to argue with somebody about rooks."

Beck's ears went red.

"That was me," he said. "She was arguing with me."

Tobin looked up.

Something passed over his face. I watched him put it together. Five years of nights. A voice at a gate.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay?"

"Yes. You can." He jammed his hands deeper in his pockets. "But if you ever make her cry, I'll..."

"You'll what?"

Tobin thought about it.

"I'll tell Rhoda," he said.

Beck nodded slowly, very serious.

"That's fair," he said. "That's terrifying, but it's fair."

I turned the burner back on before either of them saw me, and burned the first grilled cheese.

The hearing hall opened on the first day of the snow.

The whole pack walked up the valley for it.

It sat beside the iron gates where the warden's hut used to be.

It had new pine walls, a stone hearth and a long window that looked straight at the bars.

Nobody had to face away from anybody in there.

Tobin had hung the door. The twins had done the roof, and only fallen off it twice.

The fiddler played on the porch with his three strings, and the woman with the burned hands handed out pies.

Rhoda stood at the front in a new wool coat and made a speech about wardens and healers.

Mostly it was about keeping your damn eyes open, and it went on for twenty minutes.

Nobody dared interrupt her.

When she finally sat down, Beck stood up.

I thought he was going to say something about tracking.

He walked to the front of the hall, in front of the whole pack and the open door and the gate beyond it.

Then he turned and looked straight at me.

"Five years ago I sat out there," he said. He pointed through the window, at the gate. "Every night. With my back to the bars."

The hall went quiet.

"I wasn't allowed to look at her," he said. "So I listened. I listened to her cry, and then I listened to her stop. I listened to her keep an old woman alive through a fever. I listened to her laugh at my jokes, which are bad."

"Very bad," called one of the twins.

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