Claiming the Spare Twin novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: No Tea

Without her father's tea her senses roar, and one growl silences a hall of wolves.

I woke at dawn with my head splitting and Rosalie's phone still dark beside me.

No call. No text.

The third bell had rung and gone, and my sister had not come back.

I lay there and waited for the headache to pass, since I knew what it was.

It came every morning around this time, until my father's tea reached me at six and dulled it.

There was no tea at High Ridge.

Then the pain broke, and the world came in all at once.

I could hear the whole lodge.

A kettle whistled two floors down, and boots hit the stairs.

A man in the kitchen swore softly at a burnt pan.

I could smell wood smoke, bacon and laundry soap.

Under all of it was the clean, dark smell of the man asleep on the couch.

Dorran lay with one arm over his eyes and his boots still on.

He had never taken the bed, or the blanket.

I sat very still until my own breathing sounded normal to me, and then I got up and dressed in the clothes Keegan had left outside the door.

The mark on my shoulder was silver in the mirror.

I pulled the collar up over it.

"Where are you going?" Dorran said from the couch, without moving his arm.

"Breakfast."

"Keegan can bring it up."

"If I eat up here, they'll say I'm hiding."

He sat up and looked at me. His eyes were grey and very awake.

"They'll say worse if you go down."

"Then let them say it to my face."

I was out the door before he answered.

The dining hall was a long room with a fire at one end and two hundred wolves at the tables.

I felt every one of them look up.

I took a tray from the counter, filled it, and walked to the nearest empty table.

"Bride's table's up front," a woman said.

She was tall and dark-haired, with a runner's build, and she had stopped in the aisle with a full mug in her hand.

"I'm fine here."

"Alpha's bride sits at the alpha's table." She smiled. "Or is that for real brides?"

Somebody laughed at the next table.

"The spare doesn't know the rules," a man said. "Nobody taught the spare."

"I know the rules," I said. "I'd just rather eat."

"Isn't that sweet?" The woman leaned over and put two fingers under the edge of my tray.

She flipped it.

Eggs hit my lap and toast hit the floor, and hot coffee ran down my sleeve.

The hall roared.

And something under my ribs came up through me, huge and fast.

I didn't decide to stand.

I didn't decide to growl, either.

The sound that came out of my chest was deep and not remotely human, and it shook the cups on the tables.

The laughing stopped.

The woman's smile fell off her face, and her eyes went to the floor.

All around me, two hundred wolves went quiet.

A boy at the next table slid down off his bench and put his head on his arms.

An old man by the fire looked at his plate.

Chair legs scraped back and shoulders bowed in a long ripple.

Slowly I understood that the whole hall was lowering its eyes to me.

I stopped growling.

My hands were shaking, and I kept them flat at my sides.

"Sorry," I said, to nobody. "I didn't mean to do that."

The woman had not lifted her head. Her throat worked.

"Keegan," I said, because he had come in behind her with a plate of bacon and his mouth hanging open. "Could someone get her a clean mug?"

Keegan opened his mouth and shut it again.

"Mine's on the floor," the woman whispered.

"I know. I mean a new one. For her."

I turned around.

Dorran stood in the doorway with his hands at his sides.

I had no idea how long he'd been there.

He didn't look angry, and he didn't look pleased.

He looked at me hard, and he did not blink.

The hall waited. Nobody moved.

"Eat your breakfast, all of you," he said, and the room moved again.

He crossed the floor to me and took the coffee-soaked sleeve of my shirt between two fingers.

"Come upstairs," he said quietly.

"I didn't do anything wrong."

"I know." His eyes were on my face. "That's the problem."

He lowered his voice so that only I could hear.

"Both packs say you've never shifted. Nobody who has never shifted does that."

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