The Cold Breakfast Bride novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Neutral Ground

Cordell got out of the truck and left the door open.

His beta climbed out of the back.

Linnea took her time.

She came around the hood in a cream sweater and white jeans, the Luna ring on her finger, resized now so it slid right down.

The whole line watched them cross the gravel.

Cordell stopped in front of the tailgate.

He looked at the cardboard sign.

HATTY'S. STILL OPEN. SORT OF.

Then he looked at me, and his nostrils flared.

I watched him breathe me in and find it.

His face went very still.

Then his eyes went past me to Abel, standing in the open door of the reefer, and they narrowed.

He was smelling Abel on me, too.

"So it's true," he said.

"What's true?"

"Don't." He said it quietly, but the Alpha was in it, and three wolves in line flinched. "Linnea said you were carrying. I didn't believe her."

"How would Linnea know?"

Linnea smiled.

"Everyone in the valley can smell it, Jess. You're not subtle."

"Funny. Nobody in line said a word until today."

"You were going to hide my pup," Cordell said.

He said my pup the way he'd said my Luna.

Like a thing on a shelf.

"I wasn't hiding anything. I was making breakfast."

"Get your things. You're coming home."

"I am home."

"This?" He swept a hand at the tailgate, the reefer, the padlocked diner. "This isn't a home. It's a parking lot."

"It's my grandfather's parking lot."

"The heir of Iron Ridge is not being born in a parking lot."

"Then it's a good thing I don't have the heir of Iron Ridge," I said. "I have a baby."

"You gave up the right to call it anything when you said the words."

"That's not how pack law works."

"You also said I was a mistake. Pick one."

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