My Boyfriend Cheated With My Best Friend, So the Pack Law Handed Me to His Brother novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Five Terms

At the Council in the Fatima hall the law is read: twenty-nine days. In the hall's cold kitchen Zia names five terms and Duarte accepts every one.

The Our Lady of Fatima hall on Union Street smells of wax and old coffee, and on the night of the Harvest Council it smelled of wolf.

I came in by the side door in my work apron with the rain still on me.

Nobody stops a plain Omega at a side door, and nobody ever had.

Two hundred of the Night Tide pack sat on folding chairs under the paper banners.

The long table on the dais held the elders in their good coats.

The man in the middle was the chair of the Council, a narrow old man in a gray suit with a silver pin at his collar.

I took a seat at the back, and he looked at me.

His wolf looked at my mouth, not my face.

I didn't understand that yet, only that I didn't like it.

At the end of the dais, in a straight chair with a blue cloth bundle under it, sat Avó Graça Cabral, seventy-nine, the grandmother of both brothers.

She had her reading glasses on a chain and her hands folded on her cane.

She looked at me for a long moment, and then she looked at the door.

Duarte came in four minutes after I did.

He walked down the center aisle in his black suit, and the whole hall stopped talking, because the Ledger is never late.

He did not look at the dais.

He looked at me once, all the way to the back, and then he went up the steps and stood at the table.

Graça's hand tightened on the blue cloth.

When he sat down, she closed the book she had open on her knee.

I saw her do it.

"The Harvest Council is called to order," the chair said.

"Before the accounts, the Alpha has asked for a word on the law of the mate."

A murmur ran along the benches.

Duarte stood.

"Twenty minutes ago," he said, "I scented my fated mate, in a room in this city, for the first time."

The hall went absolutely silent.

"I have not spoken a rejection," he said. "I won't."

"By the law of this pack, the Council hears her first."

Two hundred heads turned.

Wolves can find one scent in a room full of scents.

They found me at the back in about a second.

"Luzia Pacheco," the chair said, softly, like a man pleased by a bill. "Come forward."

I walked up the aisle with my apron on and my hands in my pockets.

On the dais I did not sit.

"The law gives the Alpha twenty-nine days," the chair said, "to acknowledge his mate before this Council."

"If he does not, the Council may vote on neglect."

"And if I say no?" I said.

The chair smiled.

"Child, a mate-bond is not a matter of yes or no."

"It's a matter of my name," I said.

"Say it to him in private," Graça said.

It was the first thing she had said all night, and she did not raise her voice.

The chair stopped smiling.

Duarte took me through the side door into the hall's cold back kitchen.

It had steel counters, a pot rack and a coffee urn that was still warm.

He shut the door and stood against it with his hands behind him.

He did not come near me.

The room was small, and the pull was so strong that I had to put a hand on the counter.

"I'm going to say some terms," I said, "and you're going to say yes or no to each one."

"Yes," he said.

"You haven't heard them."

"Then say them quickly," Duarte said. "I've been standing in your scent for twenty minutes and I'd like to hear something else."

My face went hot, and I ignored it.

"One," I said. "I keep the shed and I keep my job on the auction floor at five a.m."

"Yes," he said.

"Two. I live in my own flat over the shed. Not in your house, and not in his."

"Yes," he said.

"Three. I sit at no Alpha table until I decide to."

"Yes," he said again.

I had to stop and think of the fourth.

"The Council hears me before it hears you," I said.

He was quiet for a moment.

"Yes," he said. "That one is already done."

"What do you mean?"

"I said it in the hall," Duarte said. "I said it before you walked in."

I stared at him.

"Five," I said, to keep going. "If I want out, I say so in front of the whole pack on the day after the spring Council, and you let me walk."

His jaw moved.

"Yes," he said, very low.

"You're agreeing to everything," I said.

"It's all I have to give you," Duarte said. "I won't waste it arguing."

"Why are you so calm?"

He looked at me.

For the first time something moved in the dark of his eyes, and it was gone before I could name it.

"I'm not," he said. "Go home, Miss Pacheco. Sleep."

"I'm not scared of you."

"I know," he said. "That's the problem."

He opened the door and stood aside again, with his back flat to the frame.

I looked at his scarred hand, flat against the wood and shaking just slightly.

He had written term four before I ever opened my mouth.

At the hall door my phone buzzed.

It was Tomás.

*Zia please. It was Bianca's idea. I swear to God.*

I put the phone back in my apron and went out into the rain.

Behind me, through the glass of the door, I saw the chair lean down to Graça and say something.

She did not answer him.

She was holding the blue cloth in both hands.

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