They Thought My Mate Chose Her novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Three Hundred Robes

Wenna signs the commission in the hall on her own terms and realizes every robe will carry her scent, and at midnight the Alpha is at her back door asking to learn to press a seam.

I didn't touch the folder.

"Three hundred hooded robes in twenty-eight days," I said. "You know what that is?"

"A job." Tressa pushed off the counter. "Most girls in your position would say thank you."

"Most girls in my position would have their dress."

Her smile slipped for half a second.

Then it came back, bright and wide.

"Sign it or don't. I'll have Daddy send the movers Saturday."

I picked up the pen from the cup by the register.

She watched me with her chin up, waiting to enjoy it.

I put the pen down again.

"Not here," I said. "In the hall. Tonight. In front of the elders, with the terms read out loud, so nobody can say later what they weren't."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because you want three hundred wolves to watch me agree to sew your robes."

She thought about it.

I watched her decide she did want that, very much.

"Seven o'clock," she said, and the bell rang behind her on her way out.

Kitto let himself in the back at nine with his hair on end and my spare key in his hand.

I told him.

He sat down on the pressing table.

"Three hundred," he said.

"Three hundred."

"Wenna. We do three a day if we don't eat. That's eighty-four robes. That's two hundred and sixteen naked werewolves standing on a beach in November."

"I know the math."

"Do you? Because I'm the one who does the books here, and the math is crying."

At seven o'clock the union hall was nearly as full as it had been the night before.

They'd come to see the seamstress sign her own eviction.

Tressa sat in the front row in my red silk, with her father beside her in a gray suit I'd let out in June.

Cador stood at the back wall with his arms folded.

I didn't look at him.

I walked to the elders' table and put Tressa's folder down in front of Merryn.

"I'll do it," I said. "Three hundred hooded robes, charcoal wool, by moonrise on Rite night. If one is missing, I lose my mother's machines and my lease. Those are her terms."

A murmur went along the walls.

"These are mine."

I took a folded sheet out of my apron pocket.

"Three hundred robes at a hundred and twenty dollars each is thirty-six thousand. Half is paid tonight, from the pack treasury, because wool doesn't buy itself. Eighteen thousand dollars."

Clement half rose out of his chair.

"The treasury doesn't pay for the Luna-elect's commission."

"It always has," Merryn said, without looking up from my sheet. "My robes were paid out of the treasury in 1969. I was there."

"And I want Merryn Penhale to witness it," I said. "Not the Beta. Merryn."

The old woman looked at me over her reading glasses.

Something moved at the corner of her mouth.

"I'll witness it," she said.

Clement wrote the check at the elders' table while the whole pack watched him do it.

His pen dug so hard into the paper I thought it would tear.

He held it out to me between two fingers.

I took it, folded it once, and put it in my apron.

Tressa signed first, with a flourish.

I signed under her in my plain hand.

Merryn signed under both of us and blew on the ink.

"Done," she said. "God help you, child."

Kitto made it to the parking lot before he started talking again.

"Eighteen thousand dollars. You squeezed Clement Hocking for eighteen thousand dollars in front of his own daughter. I may need to sit on the curb."

"Sit on it at home."

We walked down Fifth Street in the cold.

The streetlights buzzed. The lake wind came up the hill smelling of iron and snow.

"Wool from the mill in Duluth," I said. "Freight to the depot every week. I'll cut every piece myself. I'll finish every hood myself. Nobody else's hands on the hoods."

"Fine. You're a control freak. We knew that."

I stopped walking.

Kitto went three more steps before he noticed and turned around.

"Wenna?"

"Kitto. What did the wolf follow last night?"

"Your dress."

"Why?"

"Because it smelled like..." He stopped.

I watched it land on him.

"Six weeks of my hands on that silk," I said. "And these robes get four weeks of my hands. Every one. Every seam, every hood."

"Every wolf on that beach," Kitto said slowly, "is going to smell like you."

"All three hundred."

"Including Tressa."

"Especially Tressa."

He stared at me under the streetlight.

Then he put both hands on his head and laughed so loud a dog started barking two houses down.

"You absolute witch," he said. "You beautiful, spiteful witch."

I didn't laugh.

I felt it, though, a small hard warmth under my ribs.

For the first time since four fifteen yesterday afternoon, I felt like the one holding the needle.

I sent Kitto home at eleven and cut robe pieces from old muslin until midnight to learn the pattern.

At midnight, somebody knocked on my back door.

Not loud. Two knocks, careful.

I took the shears with me.

I opened the door a crack.

Cador Penhale stood on my back step in the cold, in a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows.

His forearms were scarred from the boatyard, and his breath smoked.

He didn't try to come in.

"Teach me to press a seam," he said.

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