Chapter 4: The Empty Chair

Freya held out a silver wine pitcher to me across the feast table.

"For old times' sake," she said. "You must be good at it. Five years of pouring for my mate."

It was the third night at Kingsfall.

Eleven Alphas had come up the shore for the ceremony, early.

They sat along the high table with their seconds behind them, and every one of them had heard about the moonstone and the wine.

Every one of them was watching me.

I didn't take the pitcher.

"I'm sure you'll learn," I said.

Freya kept holding it out. Her smile didn't move.

"Take it, Kari," Rune said from her other side. "Don't be bitter in front of guests."

The packless ache had come at noon on the first day, just like Haakon said.

It sat under my ribs and made everything a little too loud.

Three days in, I'd stopped noticing it except when somebody said my name in that voice.

Rune said my name in that voice.

"I'm not bitter," I said. "I'm eating."

I ate a forkful of lake trout to prove it.

Across from me, the Alpha of the Iron Range, a gray barrel of a man, snorted into his beer.

Freya set the pitcher down hard enough to slop wine on the cloth.

"She's always like this," Rune told the table, shaking his head.

"Sharp. Cold. You'd think she'd be grateful I let her keep the title."

He leaned back in his chair.

"Five years in that den, and it was like sleeping next to a lake in January. No wonder nothing ever took root."

A few wolves laughed.

Not the Iron Range Alpha. He put his beer down.

Freya laughed loudest.

"Nothing at all?" she said. "Not even a scare? Poor thing."

My fork was very steady in my hand. I noticed that from somewhere far away.

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