Fated to My Mate's Uncle novel · Chapter 15 of 32

Chapter 15: Recant

I didn't cry over the lab.

I'd done my crying in the river.

I got dressed, ate Patsy's eggs, and told them both what I was going to do on Sunday.

"No," Fraser said.

"I'm not asking."

"I know you're not. I'm still saying no." He sat down across from me. "They'll tear you apart in there."

"They exiled you on my word. They should hear me take it back. From me, in that room, not from a court clerk in October."

"It won't change the verdict."

"It's not for the verdict." I looked at him. "It's for you."

He didn't say anything for a long time.

Patsy put a plate of toast between us and sat down.

"I'm driving her," she said. "You'll wait at the ford like a good dog."

"I'm not a dog."

"You're a wolf. Same thing with better posture."

On Sunday I crossed by the highway bridge in Patsy's truck.

I wore clean jeans, a clean shirt and my hair in a braid.

The pack hall was full.

It's always full on Sunday, but this one was fuller.

Word had gone around about the fire.

Families who never came to Sunday supper were there with their pups.

When I walked in, the room went quiet.

Then I heard the sniffing.

All down the long tables, four hundred noses lifted.

I'd showered twice.

It didn't matter.

Fraser was on me, under my skin, the way a fated mate is.

"Well," said a woman near the door. "Look who's been sleeping in the burn."

Somebody laughed.

Gregor sat at the head table in a pressed blue shirt.

Charmaine sat at his left hand, very still.

The boy sat beside her, picking at a roll.

He saw me and sat up straight, and his mother put her hand on his arm.

I didn't go to the elders' table.

I went to the middle of the hall, between the tables, where everyone could see me.

"Eight years ago," I said, "I stood at that table and read a jacket."

The room got very quiet.

"I was nineteen. It was my first big reading. I'd been a reader for five years, and I'd never had a dead man's clothes in front of me."

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