Chapter 24: The Table

I woke up to the smell of coffee and the sound of two hundred people trying to be quiet.

It came up through the floor of the Alpha's room.

Ash lay on his back beside me with one arm flung over his head, grinning at the ceiling.

"They've been down there since six," he said. "I heard the elders arguing over who gets the good chairs."

"It's seven."

"It's a very polite mob."

I found my jeans and his flannel, the one with the missing buttons, and I went down the stairs barefoot.

The big kitchen was packed.

Every bench from the hall had been carried over, and long tables ran through the dining room and out onto the porch.

The pack sat shoulder to shoulder with plates and mugs.

Anders was at the stove in a borrowed apron, flipping pancakes, with Ash's mother handing him plates.

My brother sat at the near end, with a stack of dishes in front of him and a dish towel over his shoulder.

He looked up when I came in.

He didn't say anything, but he stood up, and he stayed standing.

"Sit down," I said. "You'll get a crick in your neck."

He sat.

His ears went red, and he started drying the same plate again.

The room had gone quiet when I walked in.

It was not the old kind of quiet, the kind that waited for me to disappear.

This one leaned toward me.

At the head of the table stood a big oak chair with arms.

It had been Dad's.

I had stood next to it at every dinner of my life, passing the potatoes.

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