Claiming the Spare Twin novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: What Rosalie Owes

For a moment Rosalie stood alone at the edge of the ring with the bowl in her hands.

I walked across the field to her in Dorran's coat, with my arm wrapped in a strip torn from his shirt.

Behind me three hundred wolves stood up off their knees to watch.

"Put it down," I said.

She set the bowl on the grass.

She was shaking, and her hair had come loose, and her white dress was wet to the knees from the ring.

"I'll hear what Cold Creek says," I said. "Then I'll say mine."

"Drive her out with him," the gray-haired elder said at once. "She carried that cup to her sister's door herself."

"She spilled it tonight," said a man.

"After she stood by while he took the girl's life apart!"

"She's a child."

"She's twenty-three."

The voices rose, and I let them.

Rosalie did not defend herself, and she did not cry.

That surprised me more than anything she'd said at the grave.

When the noise had worn itself down, I raised my hand.

"Rosalie Marrow," I said.

"Yes."

"You are my sister, and you are the daughter of the man we just drove out."

"You have lost your place at this table."

Her chin came up.

"You're stripped of your rank in this pack," I said. "You'll leave Cold Creek tomorrow, with a bag and nothing else."

A sound went along the line, half satisfied and half shocked.

"For how long?" she asked.

"A year and a day."

Her mouth twitched.

"That's the length of my claim," she said.

"It is."

"Funny."

"You'll live on your own wages and your own name."

"When the year is up, you can come home, kneel at the stone and tell the pack all of it, from the first cup."

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