The Cold Breakfast Bride novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Ring

Jess returns the ring to 300 wolves on her own terms and invites them all to the supper, then the pack doctor catches her at her truck with her blood work.

I put the velvet box in my apron pocket and finished the lunch rush.

Hatty wanted to come.

"Your heart says no," I told her.

"My heart says I'd like to slap that boy across the lake."

"Your doctor says no."

She sat back down on her stool by the register and said a word she'd never said in front of me when I was twelve.

The night cook came in at five and found me scrubbing the flat-top.

"Heard you got summoned," he said.

"News travels."

"Truckers talk. You going?"

"I'm going."

"In that?"

I looked down at my white cook's jacket, the sleeves shoved up, grease on the cuff.

"In this."

He thought about it.

Then he took his keys off the hook.

"I'll drive. Packless don't get invited to moon runs."

"So why are you coming?"

"Packless don't get told no, either."

The Iron Ridge lakeshore was a long sweep of gravel below the lodge.

Three hundred wolves stood on it in a loose half-circle, most of them still on two legs.

The moon was coming up over the pass, fat and yellow.

The fire was already lit.

I'd cooked for every one of these people.

I knew who took their steak bloody and who hid the peas in a napkin and whose kid was allergic to walnuts.

They watched me get out of an old diesel truck with a packless wolf at the wheel.

Nobody said a word.

Cordell stood by the fire in a gray flannel shirt with his Alpha ring catching the light.

Linnea stood at his side in a cream sweater, pearls in her ears, her hand through his arm.

She'd come to watch a woman crawl.

My wolf pressed against the inside of my ribs, weak and furious.

I walked across the gravel in my kitchen clogs.

"Jess," Cordell said. "Thank you for coming."

His voice carried.

He'd planned this part.

"You're welcome," I said.

Linnea smiled at me.

"Oh, you came straight from work. That's so sweet. Did you bring a casserole?"

A few people laughed.

Not many.

"Not tonight," I said. "You can have the leftovers from three years of them. They're in the freezer, labeled by date."

That got a bigger laugh.

One of the cooks from the lodge kitchen put her hand over her mouth.

Linnea's smile stayed exactly where it was.

Her eyes didn't.

Cordell held out his hand.

"The ring."

I took the velvet box out of my apron.

I didn't hand him the box.

I opened it, took the ring out, and put it in his palm myself.

Silver, with a moonstone the size of my thumbnail.

I'd worn it into flour and hollandaise and dishwater for three years.

"There," I said. "By hand. In front of the pack."

He closed his fingers on it.

For a second he looked down at it.

Linnea reached over and took it out of his hand.

She slipped it on her own finger while everybody watched.

It stuck at the knuckle.

She had to twist it.

"It'll need sizing," she said lightly.

"Most things do," I said.

Somebody in the back snorted.

Cordell's jaw went tight.

"That's all, Jess. You can go."

"Not quite."

I turned around to face the pack.

Three hundred faces in the firelight.

Their wolves were right there behind their eyes.

I could feel them watching mine.

"The Hunter's Moon supper is at Hatty's on October 24," I said. "Same as every year since 1952."

The fire popped.

"Every pack in the valley eats at one table on the pass. Iron Ridge is welcome."

Cordell's beta looked at Cordell.

Cordell looked at me.

"I'm cooking," I said. "Elk stew, brown butter rolls, huckleberry pie. Come hungry."

Then I looked right at Cordell.

"It'll be hot. I can't promise he'll come down in time to eat it."

The laugh started at the back and rolled forward.

It wasn't polite.

It was three hundred wolves who'd watched their Alpha's breakfast go cold for three years.

The old cook from the lodge kitchen laughed loudest.

Linnea's face went white, then pink.

She leaned to Cordell's ear and said something I didn't have to hear.

I could see it in his shoulders.

"There may not be a diner by October," he said.

"Then you'll miss a good pie."

I turned and walked back across the gravel.

The night cook already had the engine running.

Nobody stopped me.

A few people touched my arm as I went past.

A young mother whose twins I'd fed through the croup.

A boy who used to steal rolls off my cooling rack.

The cook who'd held the door for me this morning.

"Hot," she whispered. "Good."

I was almost to the truck when someone said my name.

Not Jess.

"Mrs. Kinnear."

Only one person in the pack had ever called me that.

The pack doctor stood by the bumper with her bag in one hand and her car keys in the other.

She was fifty-four and tired, gray hair pinned up with a pencil.

Her family had eaten at my table every night the winter her husband was sick.

She didn't come close.

She kept her voice so low my wolf barely caught it.

"Your blood work came back," she said.

My stomach turned over.

"And?"

"Everything's strong. The baby's strong. Its wolf is already in there."

She glanced over my shoulder at the fire, at Cordell, at Linnea twisting the ring on her finger.

"Does the Alpha know?"

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