Chapter 10: Potluck

The Elk Fork pack potluck is held in the Grange hall on the first Saturday of every October.

Eighty wolves bring eighty casseroles, and nobody goes home hungry.

I wore a green dress that buttoned down the front, with the sleeves cut short.

I did my hair with my fingers.

Joss stood in my bedroom doorway with a pan of cornbread in both hands and looked at me for a long moment.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing. Just the dress."

"Is it bad?"

"No." He cleared his throat. "I'll be thinking about the buttons all night."

The Grange hall was loud and warm and crowded.

Long tables ran down the center under paper tablecloths, and kids shrieked between the chairs.

My mother waved from the dessert table with a spatula in her hand.

She mouthed at me: "Finally."

Dena found me by the punch bowl and handed me a cup.

"Everyone is staring at you," she said happily.

"I know."

"Everyone knows about the barn. The tack room. The hayloft. Your mother thinks you're going to elope."

"Dena."

"Keeley's here. Don't look. Table by the coffee urn. She's wearing white."

I did not look.

I put my hand on Joss's arm.

He covered it with his own, and it was big and warm over mine.

Across the room Emmett Varney climbed onto a folding chair with a plastic cup in his fist.

He is fifty-five, wiry and weathered, and he has run the pack for eighteen years without once raising his voice.

"Evening, all," he said, and the hall went quiet. "Before we eat. A short word."

Someone whistled.

"Ten days ago the Keeper read two names that I have been waiting to hear for a good while," he said.

"Our Beta, who has carried this pack on his back since his father's day."

"And our Dr. Dunnaway, who has been up at three a.m. for every one of our cows."

People cheered.

My face went hot.

"The Thirty is the best law my grandmother's grandmother ever wrote," Emmett said.

"It gives a pair the time to find out who they are without the moon doing their thinking for them."

"I don't care how it ends."

"I care that they get to choose."

A murmur went around the room.

Emmett raised his cup.

"But I'll tell you what I hope. To Joss and to Luna Laney. May they have all thirty."

"Luna Laney," the hall echoed, eighty voices.

My ears rang.

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