Chapter 12: Supper at Dunlap's

By nine that night the diner held fourteen prisoners, twelve Lycans, eleven veterans and one bandaged Alpha.

Mercy Dunlap fed every one of them meatloaf.

"Road rule," she said, slapping a plate down in front of a zip-tied Guard private with a black eye. "You sit, I serve."

"Ma'am, I'm a prisoner."

"You're a customer who can't use his hands. Eat."

He ate.

We had pushed every table in the place into one long row.

The vets sat at one end, the hunters sat at the other, and a no-man's-land of salt shakers ran down the middle.

Nobody talked.

Then the cook put a plastic placemat in front of the King of the Lycans.

It had a cartoon trout on it and a menu of children's meals.

"For the majesty," he said, deadpan.

Dacre looked at the trout for a very long moment.

"Thank you," he said gravely. "It is a fine fish."

The hunter with the cropped hair choked on her water.

The trucker-cap woman said, "He's a person," in a tone of wonder.

And all down the table the talk began.

Somebody asked a hunter how he'd tracked the ford.

Somebody else asked a vet how she'd lost the finger.

By ten the salt shakers had been moved.

The boy with the black eye was explaining to two Lycans that his sergeant had told him they were being ambushed.

"Who told you that?" a hunter asked.

"The Marshal's detail."

"And were we ambushing you?"

"No, sir," the boy said, looking at his hands. "You were standing in the trees. Nobody fired at all until our own side did."

A vet put a second slice of pie in front of him without a word.

Mercy raised her mug from the end of the table.

"To the Sarge," she said. "Who cut the bond, put three goons on the floor and called a ward out of a rock, all before breakfast."

"It was after breakfast," I said.

"To the Sarge, after breakfast."

The whole room drank.

I looked down the table and found a pair of grey eyes looking back at me.

For a second I forgot every room I had ever counted.

Later, when the plates were cleared and the lights low, I went to room three.

He was already sitting on the bed with his boots off and the lamp lit.

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