Fated to My Mate's Uncle novel · Chapter 26 of 32

Chapter 26: The Reading

The lawyer was on his feet before I'd finished.

"Read what? The jacket is ash."

"Two inches of it aren't," I said.

I took the seal bag out of my jacket and held it up.

Brown canvas. A dark stain along one edge.

"The right cuff. I cut it in the Keeping on the night of July second."

"Cut from stolen evidence," the lawyer said, "in a break-in. By her own admission."

"Let me ask you something first," I said. "How many times did that jacket burn?"

He blinked.

"The pack burned a jacket at the July supper," I said, louder, to the benches. "You all watched it. Then in August the Alpha stood at the ford with a steel barrel, held up a jacket, called it stolen from the Keeping, and burned it again."

I turned to the head table.

"Gregor. If the real one burned in July, what did you burn in August?"

The hall went quiet in a new way.

Gregor's jaw moved.

"The real one went into that barrel," I said. "You knew it was real. You'd been told what was on it."

The Lolo Alpha put his hat on the table.

"Let her read," he said. "We'll weigh it after."

The Darby Alpha nodded.

The eldest elder didn't move at all.

I opened the bag.

I didn't sit. The old reader had said standing on my own two feet, and I meant to.

I held the swatch close and breathed.

"Fraser Kinnaird," I said. "That's where I stopped at nineteen."

I breathed again.

"I'm not stopping."

The hall was so quiet I could hear the lantern chains creak.

"Gardenia. Inside the collar, in the lining. Not where you'd carry a coat. Where you'd hug it."

Charmaine's hand went to her locket.

"Blood. Old. On the cuff, where it was logged as river silt." I looked up. "I'd like the court to have the Alpha open his left hand."

Gregor laughed.

"This is theater."

"Open it, son," said the Lolo Alpha.

Gregor sat very still.

Then he laid his left hand on the white tablecloth and turned it over.

The thin white scar ran straight across his palm.

I'd kissed that palm on my wedding day.

I walked to the head table.

He watched me come.

I bent over his open hand and breathed, slow, from the heel to the fingers, the way I'd breathed over Fraser's on the shower house step.

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