Claimed After Divorce by My Brother's Best Friend novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Imogen's Script

Imogen sat at the end of the lodge's long kitchen table with a blanket around her shoulders and both hands wrapped around a mug.

Her shoes were ruined.

She had walked four miles in them, and her feet were bleeding through the thin leather.

The broad woman in the flannel shirt knelt in front of her and dabbed at them with a cloth without being asked.

Dalton stood by the stove with his arms crossed.

He had not said a word since the gate.

I took the chair across from Imogen.

"Is that tea?" I asked.

She blinked at me.

"Yes."

"Is it just tea?"

"It's chamomile," the woman in flannel said. "From our own shelf. Why?"

"No reason," I said, and Dalton's eyes came up to mine, and he said nothing.

Imogen looked at me, and her whole face crumpled.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry. I came to tell you that I'm sorry, and this time I mean it."

"This time," I said.

"The one at the banquet was a speech. I was told what to say, and I said it." She swallowed. "I was told to look at his father before I spoke to you, so that he'd know I'd got to the right part."

I thought of her glance at the head table.

I had noticed it, and now I knew why.

"Who told you?"

"The Alpha." She spat the word. "Gilbert's father. He found me four weeks ago. I was living in a rented room two states away, working at a veterinarian's front desk. He sat in my kitchen and drank my coffee and said he could give me my children back."

Dalton shifted against the stove.

"What did he want in return?" he said.

"For me to walk into that party and say sorry in front of everyone. Be the mother who came home." Her fingers whitened on the mug. "And at the full moon, to stand at the council and say I claim my children as their blood mother, so they come to me, and not to the Alpha line's nursery."

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