He Bred My Sister, So I Chose the Man He Fears novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Naming

I read the pup aloud before the Alpha could walk in.

I held her against my shoulder, with my face to her damp head, and I breathed.

The hall went so quiet that I heard the fire settle.

"Pup, a girl, three days born," I said. "Mother, Larisa Kuzmin. Sire, Knut Halvorsen."

I did not raise my voice.

The room did it for me.

The word went from bench to bench in a low rush.

A woman by the stove said, "I knew it."

A man laughed once, short and ugly, and stopped.

The door at the back of the hall banged open.

"Natalya."

Knut came down the length of the Cache House in his good wool coat with two of his men behind him.

He was smiling.

It was the warm smile, the easy one, the one that had always worked on me.

"You came home," he said. "Thank God."

"I came to read the pup."

"You've read her, and I'm grateful." He spread his hands to the hall. "My friends, my Nose is back, and she is not herself."

I said nothing.

"She went into the Dark Heat in a rage, with a stranger, and no Nose reads true in the heat."

"I forgive it. I'd be a poor Alpha if I didn't."

"Knut," said the old woman at the end of the Kitchen bench.

"Mother, with respect. She was not herself at the Solstice, and she is not herself now."

"Her reading is void, and the Nose belongs to the Alpha. That's the oldest law we have."

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