Fifty Shades of Grey Can't Hold a Candle to This Book novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Gravy

Melody salts Orla's gravy in front of the alpha, Cade eats it anyway, and Orla finds a grey powder that smells like her coffee.

The pack house kitchen was already hot when I came in at five-thirty on Wednesday.

Two dozen eggs were cracked in a bowl.

Hester Boone had a knife in each hand and was breaking down a side of bacon.

"You're late," she said, without looking up.

"I'm four minutes early."

"For a girl with a pulse, that's late. Gravy's yours."

Hester was sixty-six and ran the pantry.

She had a silver braid down her back and forearms scarred by fifty years of oven doors.

She had taught me how to hold a whisk when I was five.

My mother stood at the biscuit table with flour up to her elbows. She gave me a look I could not read and went back to her dough.

She had been quiet all morning, and I had not told her about the thermos.

I started the roux and stirred it slowly, with my head clear and my hands steady.

The sausage fat smelled strong enough to taste.

I could hear the hall filling up on the other side of the swinging doors.

"Don't take it personally," Hester said under her breath. "Melody's been in the pantry twice since I opened."

"What for?"

"She said she wanted a biscuit."

"Did she get one?"

"She got my elbow." Hester grinned. "Taste your gravy, girl."

I tasted it. It was perfect.

I poured it into the big white bowl and set it on the tray with the eggs.

Two omegas carried the trays out to the head table.

I watched through the little round window in the door.

Garrick Ransom sat at the center, in the alpha's chair.

He was a big man with iron-grey hair and a scar through one eyebrow.

When he walked into the pack house, wolves stepped out of his way before he reached them.

Cade sat on his right.

Melody sat on his left, with her bandaged wrist laid on the table where everyone could see it.

I watched her lift the lid of the gravy bowl and look inside.

Her hand moved over it. Something white fell from her fingers.

"Hester," I said.

"I saw." Her voice was flat. "Wait."

Garrick took a spoonful of gravy on his biscuit.

He chewed, and then he stopped.

He put the fork down very slowly, and the whole hall went still.

"Who made this?" he said.

Melody answered first, in a small, hurt voice. "The omega girl. Orla Harrow. She was angry about yesterday, Alpha. I think she did it on purpose."

My stomach dropped.

My mother started toward the doors, and Hester caught her wrist.

"Rose. Let the girl speak for herself."

I pushed the swinging door open and walked out into the hall.

Two hundred faces turned toward me.

My legs wanted to shake, and I did not let them.

"I didn't salt it, Alpha," I said. "I tasted it in the kitchen. It was right when it left my hands."

"Are you calling the beta's daughter a liar?"

"I'm saying she was the last one who touched the bowl."

Garrick looked at me, and then he looked a second time, and I saw his nostrils flex.

For one long breath he did not say anything at all.

Then the chair beside him scraped back.

Cade picked up the gravy bowl.

He tipped a full spoonful onto his plate, took a bite of biscuit, and swallowed.

His eyes watered.

He drank half a glass of water and set the glass down.

"It's fine," he said.

"It's inedible," Melody said sharply. "Cade, don't."

"I said it's fine."

He took a second bite, and a third, and he finished the whole plate while the hall watched him.

He did not look at me once.

Garrick's hand had closed slowly on the edge of the table.

"Sit down, Harrow," he said at last. "Rose, your girl has an attitude. Teach it out of her before the banquet."

"Yes, Alpha." My mother's voice came from behind me, very low.

I walked back to the kitchen with my face burning.

Hester was waiting beside the door with a towel. She wiped my cheek, although I had not known I was crying.

"That boy just ate a pound of salt in front of his daddy," she said. "Think about that."

"He didn't do it for me."

"No?" She looked at me a long moment. "Then who for?"

I did not have an answer.

Melody swept in a minute later to collect her jacket. She stopped in the doorway and smiled at me.

"Enjoy your last omega week," she said.

Then she was gone.

I was angry enough to throw the salt jar at the wall.

Instead I went to move a fifty-pound sack of flour, because Hester's back was bad and she would try it herself.

Behind the sack, pushed against the wall, was a small tin jar.

It had no label. I unscrewed the lid.

Inside was a fine grey powder, and the smell that came off it was bitter and familiar.

It was the smell of my coffee.

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