The Alpha Crowned the Orphan, So Both His Betas Followed Me Out novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Candle Service

Jubal's POV

Granny Yocum met us at her door on Christmas Eve at two in the afternoon and looked us over, one by one.

"You three smell like the road," she said. "Go up and wash it off. Supper's at five."

"Yes, ma'am," said Tobe.

"Take the back room. The window's got the best light, and the bed doesn't squeak."

She went back to the kitchen on her cane.

I stood in her front hall with a duffel bag and a wrapped ham from Shyla's pantry.

I also had a very small thing in my coat pocket that I had not told anyone about.

"That woman," Shyla said, "has just sent us to bed."

"She's eighty-three," said Tobe. "She's earned it."

"She picked the bed that doesn't squeak!"

"She's thorough," I said, and followed them upstairs, because my knees would do whatever they were told that day.

I was going to ask her at supper.

I had been going to ask her since the Moot.

I had written it out four times on the back of a prescription pad and torn it up four times.

I am a man who talks for a living, and I could not find the first word.

The back room had a slanted ceiling and an iron bed with a white quilt.

Its window looked out over the Jacks Fork, frozen at the edges.

Snow lay on the hay barn roof, and the sun came in thin and gold across the floor.

Shyla shut the door behind us and stood with her back against it.

"You're quiet," she said to me.

"I'm thinking," I said.

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