Chapter 6: Harvest Supper

The Larch Ridge hall smelled of roast elk and cider and woodsmoke, the way it did every Harvest Supper of my life.

I stood outside the big doors in my good boots and a borrowed sweater of Gran's.

Keir stood beside me.

"Last chance to change your mind," he said.

"You can go home."

"And miss this?" He held the door. "Guest of the Black Fork Alpha. Nobody lays a hand on you in there."

"I know the law."

"I know you know it. I'm telling them."

We walked in.

Two hundred conversations stopped at once.

Long tables ran the length of the hall, covered in squash and bread and jars of huckleberry jam.

At the head table sat Conrad, Beckett, and Delaney.

The other four brothers were at the next table down.

Lorne saw me and went the color of the tablecloth.

Delaney was wearing a cream dress and my mother's green scarf around her throat.

She saw me and her hand went to it.

Conrad stood up slowly.

"Lainey. You're not welcome here."

"I'm a guest of Black Fork," I said. "So I'm welcome everywhere Black Fork is welcome."

Keir leaned against the wall by the door and folded his arms.

He didn't say a word.

He didn't need to.

I walked down the middle aisle.

Every wolf I'd grown up with watched me pass.

The woman who'd taught me to bake bread looked at her plate.

The man who'd taught me to drive looked at the ceiling.

I stopped in front of the head table.

"Delaney," I said. "Tell me what I did to you."

She blinked her big green eyes.

"Lainey, please, not here."

"Here. In front of them. You told it to everybody else. Now tell it to me."

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Don't Need No Alpha Brothers from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.