The Cold Breakfast Bride novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: True Isn't Chosen

Four hundred spoons stopped.

Ruthie froze with a roll halfway to her mouth.

At the head table, Abel didn't move.

He didn't stand up.

He didn't look at Cordell.

He sat with his big hands flat on the pine he'd sanded himself and waited for me to decide.

That was how I knew.

I set Ruthie on the step beside me.

I brushed the crumbs off my apron and walked down the long table to the head of it, past every pack in the valley.

The chair watched me come.

"Jessamy Oakes," he said. "The Council has heard the Alpha of Iron Ridge. The blood is true. Will you answer him?"

"Yes."

I turned around so the tables could see me.

Then I looked at Cordell.

He was standing very straight, with his bandaged hand at his side and his gray eyes wet.

"The moon put me in front of you three years ago," I said. "I didn't pick you. Neither did you. It just happened at a run, by a lake."

"I'd have picked you anyway, back then. I made your breakfast every morning at six."

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