Chapter 27: Wood for Every Door

I called the Lodge to the hall at sunset, and they came.

Two hundred wolves filled the benches, and the rest stood along the walls with their coats on.

I sat on the dais in my father's chair, and it was too wide for me.

Jasper stood at the back of the hall, where I had asked him to stand.

Cecily sat on the front bench with her hands in her lap.

My father came in last, and he came alone.

He walked up the aisle with his hat in his hand again, and he stopped where he had stopped in the chapel.

"Gordon Winslow," I said. "Stand there."

"Yes, Alpha."

It was the first time he had called me that.

I took a blue dish towel with a red stripe out of my lap and laid it over the arm of the chair, where everyone could see.

"This was on the step of the trapper's cabin past the boundary stone," I said. "Two nights ago. With a loaf in it."

The hall went very quiet.

"Is it yours?"

He looked at the towel for a long time.

"It's mine," he said.

"The law of this pack, passed by the Council, says Lorna Winslow may not be fed or sheltered."

"I know the law."

"You stood in the chapel and asked the Council to make it."

"I did."

"Then why?"

I heard a bench creak somewhere behind me.

He turned his hat in his hands.

"I went three nights," he said. "I told myself it was cold, and she was fifty-two, and I couldn't hear it in my head."

"That's not an answer."

"No." He lifted his eyes. "The third night she came to the door."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Gown Had No Gems, So I Walked Out of My Own Bonding Ceremony from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.