My Alpha Gave Me to His Impotent Uncle novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: Into the Forge

He pulled out a folded paper, yellow at the creases.

I knew it before he opened it.

The council promise. His father's signature, and mine underneath, in the round handwriting I had at nineteen.

"Two copies," Colt said. "Mine and the council's. Both whole."

He shook it open so the porch could see.

"Get in the truck, Bryn."

Behind me, through the window, I heard Glory say a word I'd never taught her.

"If I go down to that lodge before the Hunter's Moon," I said, "I lose the bet."

"Then you lose the bet."

"And the pups go to Silver Ridge."

"That's what bets are for."

He was smiling. He'd worked it out in the truck on the way up, and he was proud of it.

I held out my hand.

"Let me see it."

He laughed. "So you can tear it?"

"So I can read it. You want everybody here to know it's real. I've read every paper this pack signed for six years. Let me read it."

The pack mothers were watching. The enforcers were watching.

He couldn't refuse me in front of them without looking scared of a piece of paper.

He put it in my hand.

I read it. It was real.

Then I turned around and walked down the porch steps with it.

"Bryn," Colt said.

I kept walking.

Across the yard, past Gunnar, past the chopping block, to the forge shed.

The forge was still banked from the bunk bed Gunnar had been hammering for the twins all week.

The coals were red under the ash.

I heard boots behind me. Colt's, fast. And Gunnar's, slower, staying between us.

I held the paper over the coals.

"Don't you dare," Colt said from the doorway.

"Your father signed this a week before he died," I said. "He wanted me to be your Luna, because he thought I'd make you better."

"Put it down."

"I didn't. Nobody could."

I let go.

The paper curled. The edge went brown, then black, then a sheet of yellow flame ran up it and took my nineteen-year-old name with it.

It was gone in moments.

The whole yard had come to the shed door to watch. The mothers, the mechanic, two of the enforcers.

Colt stared at the ash.

"The council has the other copy."

"Then tell the council what you saw," I said. "Tell them I burned it in front of your own men."

I turned to Gunnar.

He was standing just inside the door with the light from the coals on his face, and his eyes had gone gold again.

He wasn't looking at Colt at all.

"Gunnar Brennick," I said, loud enough for the yard. "I'm not his. I was never really his. I choose you."

Nobody breathed.

"Nobody gave me to you," I said. "I'm giving me to you. Yes."

His throat moved.

"Yes," he said back, rough. "Bryn. Yes."

Colt made a sound.

He looked around the shed for somebody to laugh with him.

Nobody did.

He shoved past the enforcers and walked out to his truck.

The enforcers looked at each other, then at Gunnar, and one of them nodded to him before he followed.

The tread spat gravel all the way down the drive.

The pack mothers drifted to their cars, very slowly, so they could tell everybody in the valley exactly what they'd seen.

The one who'd brought the pie squeezed my arm on her way past.

"About time," she said.

That night the kids went to bed early, because I bribed them.

The twins got the new iron bunk bed in the corner of the front room, and the one with the cast got the bottom.

Gunnar carried his old bed back into the little room off the kitchen, the one he hadn't slept in since the feast.

I watched him make it up with clean sheets.

Badly. The corners were a disaster.

"You're staring," he said, without turning around.

"You can't make a bed either."

"I'm a rancher. I sleep in barns."

"Not tonight."

He went still with the pillow in his hands.

He turned around.

"You said you needed to know," he said quietly. "That it's me. Not the moon."

"Colt told you to kneel today."

"I remember."

"You didn't. And you didn't take his seat either, and you could have. Everybody in that yard would've let you."

"I don't want his seat."

"I know. You want the kids safe. And you want me."

"Yes."

"I watched you choose that over a whole pack," I said. "My ribs didn't make me see that. I saw it."

I shut the door behind me.

The latch clicked.

He dropped the pillow.

He crossed the room in two steps, and this time his hands didn't stop an inch from my face.

He took my face in both hands and kissed me against the door.

It was nothing like the kitchen.

The kitchen had been a fever.

This was slow and deep and sure.

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