He Scorned My Love, Now He Watches My Rise novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Council Chair

Cedar Pass has one road in, and a wooden gate across it that has not been shut in forty years.

We came up it on the last afternoon of October, in Cade's truck, with my mother asleep against the window.

The pines closed in on both sides. The air smelled of cold sap and woodsmoke.

I had left this road three years ago for a man in a city.

The whole pack was waiting at the gate.

All nineteen fighters, in their good jackets. The children in front, scrubbed, holding a banner that said WELCOME HOME in letters of different sizes.

"Oh," I said.

Cade stopped the engine.

"They've been here since noon," said the Cedar Pass council's oldest member, a woman in a quilted vest, as I climbed out. "Don't cry on the banner. The paint's wet."

I cried on her instead.

She held on and patted my back.

"We've been paying to be afraid for eleven years," she said into my hair. "You walked into a ring of Alphas and ended it."

"Cade and the Ashfork Alpha and Blackwater."

"Cade did the arithmetic. You did the talking." She let me go and wiped her own eyes. "Come on. There's a table."

In the square there was a long table, set with every plate in the village.

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