One Minute Younger Always Second Best Until I Walked Out the Door novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: The Two Packs
The treaty took one morning and four pens.
We signed it in the Long Hall, on the table where the birthday cake had stood.
Ironwood Ridge sat on the south side of the room and Black Creek on the north, with the old border running down the middle of the floor.
A man who had never walked it had drawn that border, and it had been wrong for sixty years.
"Article one," Orrin read, with his glasses on the end of his nose. "The north line is shared ground. Patrols from either pack may cross it unarmed, without leave."
"Unarmed," said the broad woman with the shaved head. "Somebody will have to tell my young ones."
"Tell them twice," said Jonas.
A laugh went down the Black Creek bench, and a smaller one answered from the Ironwood side.
It was the first laugh I had heard in that hall in years.
"Article two. Gravel Fork road is closed to hunting parties and to drills. Any map for it will be drawn by Black Creek, and Ironwood will sign it."
Colt sat at the far end of the Ironwood bench with his hands in his lap.
He had come back from the ford two days ago with a cut lip and a grey face, and he had not spoken more than twenty words since.
He kept his eyes on the table.
"Article three," Orrin said. "The Alpha of Ironwood Ridge is Roxana Radley."
He stopped.
"I wrote that one myself," he said. "I would like it noted that I did not have to be told twice."
I signed.
Jonas signed under me, with a hand that was not entirely steady.
The pen was a cheap one from the Long Hall desk, and it scratched.
Nobody clapped.
They stamped on the floor, both benches together, until the dust fell from the beams.
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