This Time, I Accept Your Brother's Claim novel · Chapter 31 of 32

Chapter 31: The Letter

I unfolded it in the cab of the truck, with the engine ticking and the black lake below us.

His handwriting was terrible. It always had been, in both lives.

Mom.

I'm married. I know. Brace yourself.

She's called Elspeth. She's the Maiden. She picked me out of a folder over Piers, which you'll enjoy.

She told me the first week that I'd known her for fifty years and never once touched her hand.

I think I was a coward, the other time. I think he was a good man and a coward.

I'm not going to be a coward this time.

She pours things down sinks. She calls me stud horse in front of the matron. She made the Council cry.

She makes my tea right and won't tell me how she knows.

We're having a pup. I'm scared all the time. She's braver than me about it, and she's got more reason not to be.

You'd like her. Dad says you would. Dad says it about once a day now.

I'm not burning this one. I want her to know I told you.

Your son.

I read it twice.

Then I folded it and held it against my chest and looked out at the lake for a long time.

Auden sat with both hands on the wheel and didn't look at me.

His ears were red.

"You wrote that I made the Council cry," I said.

"The east valley one. She did. I saw her."

"And that you're a coward."

"He was," he said. "The other one. He loved you for fifty years and sat on the floor outside your door."

He turned and looked at me.

"I'd have kicked it in."

I put my hand on the back of his neck and pulled him across the seat and kissed him until the windows fogged.

We kept the letter.

It's in a frame on the wall of the Maiden's House now, by the chimney, where the seal used to hang.

By spring, the Maiden's House had a waiting list.

The matron came up Tuesdays and Saturdays. Then Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

Then she sent up a young nurse from the ward to stay full time and stopped pretending she wasn't proud of it.

They came from every lake town and half the mountain packs.

She-wolves who were pregnant and frightened. She-wolves who weren't pregnant and wanted to be.

A young she-wolf from the east valley who'd been told by her Alpha's healer that she never would be, and who sat on the cot and cried when the card came up blue.

A pack runner's mate with twins on the way, who wanted somebody to tell her she wasn't too old at thirty-four.

"You're not too old," I told her. "I'm seventy-two, some days."

She laughed. She didn't know why it was funny.

I worked there every day until I couldn't fit behind the table.

My belly had gone round and high and hard as a drum.

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