Chapter 24: The Head of the Table

The first Sunday of July, the pack ate in the big hall.

Nobody had suggested Godfrey's lodge, and nobody had asked why.

Hazel and six pack women had been in the kitchen since dawn.

By five o'clock the long table was laid for sixty, with mismatched plates from every house on the ridge.

I stood at the door in a green dress and my father's mended coat over my arm.

"You're going to wear that to dinner?" Hazel said, wiping her hands on her apron.

"I'm going to hang it on the chair."

"Which chair?"

I looked down the table.

There was a chair at the head, wide and plain, with a carved back that had belonged to a Hargrove.

There was a chair at its right hand.

"That one," I said.

Hazel nodded.

"Good," she said. "About time somebody sat in it who deserved it."

I walked to the head of the table and draped the gray wool over the back of the chair.

The pack watched me do it.

Ronan came in last.

He had his sleeves rolled to the elbow, and a bottle in one hand.

He stopped when he saw the coat on the chair.

"That's yours," he said quietly.

"That's his," I said. "He's staying for dinner."

He nodded, and swallowed, and crossed the room.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Unbonding the Ruthless Alpha from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.