Unwanted Shewolf novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Dinner at Marrick House

I went back to Marrick House on the third evening, because three of the pack's elders would be sitting at that table.

Rafe walked me down to the border stones and stopped on the Hollow side.

"If it goes wrong, howl," he said. "I'll be at the house in ten minutes."

"It won't go wrong. I want them to see him."

He didn't like it, and he did not tell me not to go.

I walked the last mile alone in a dress Sydney had packed, with my silver mark showing on my wrist.

The long table in the dining hall was laid for fourteen.

Elias sat at its head with a glass in his hand, as he had that morning, and he stood up when I came in.

"Hazel," he said. "Thank you for coming."

There was a place laid for me at his right hand, between the Beta and the eldest of the elders.

It was the first time in my life I had been put anywhere near the head.

Dustin sat at the far end, and he did not look up.

Sydney squeezed my hand as I passed, and I sat.

Everything was perfect.

The plates were the good ones, and the soup was the one I liked, and nobody said the word blank.

The eldest elder, a stooped woman with silver rings, asked me quietly whether it was true that I had woken a wolf.

"Yes," I said. "A silver one."

A hush went down the table.

"Silver," the elder repeated.

"Hazel's had a hard few days," Elias said smoothly. "She's been very brave, and I'm sorry that I wasn't kinder to her. I think we all are."

He looked at me.

I had waited my whole life to hear him say a sentence like that, and I had a clear thought in my head as he said it.

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