In Bed With My Ex's Brother-in-Law novel · Chapter 21 of 32

Chapter 21: The Gate

I didn't run down the lane.

I walked, with the frost cracking under my boots, behind seventy Jessup wolves.

Nobody let me through. Nobody had to.

They just went quiet as I passed, and the quiet moved ahead of me down the lane.

Coy came out of the house behind me with his shirt half buttoned and his eyes bloodshot.

Noreen came out after him in a cashmere robe, with her phone already at her ear.

At the gate, Rance stood with his hands at his sides.

He'd walked from the creek crossing. His jeans were wet to the knee.

Behind him on the county road, trucks were pulling onto the shoulder one after another.

Bridger trucks.

Gran got out of the first one with her purse. The four hands came out of the second.

Then came families from the trailers down the creek, in their work clothes, blinking at the Jessup brand on the pillars.

He hadn't asked them to come. I could tell by his face when he heard the doors.

They'd come anyway.

The Jessup pack spread out across the lane, thirty yards from him, and stopped.

Seventy wolves in human skin, and I could smell every one of their wolves wanting to come out.

Rance didn't move.

His eyes weren't even gold.

He was holding his wolf flat on the ground with both hands. I knew what that looked like now. I'd taught it to him.

"Bridger," Coy called. His voice cracked on it. "You're on my land."

"I'm at your gate," Rance said. "I'm not coming through it."

"Then what do you want?"

Rance looked past him.

He looked at me.

"I want to say something in front of everybody," he said. "Both packs. Because what I did, I did in front of both packs, and I'm done hiding it."

Noreen took the phone away from her ear.

I saw her understand, a half second before he said it.

She started forward.

"A week before my sister's wedding," Rance said, "Kacey told me Noreen Jessup meant to give Shiloh Rawlins' mares away at the toast. Her dead mother's horses. In front of you all."

A murmur went through the Jessups.

"I could've called Shiloh. I could've warned her. I didn't." He didn't take his eyes off me. "I wrote Noreen back that it was fine by us. I wanted Shiloh out of that house and into mine."

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