My Sister Sat at My Groom's Feet, So I Took His Whole Pack novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Sitting
Her sister sits down at her groom's feet in the middle of her vows, and Lucinda lets the ring go through the berries, walks out first, and tells the Stray at the end of the dike to drive.
My sister walked into the flooded bog in her green dress and sat down at my groom's feet.
She did it in the middle of my vows.
The water came up to her ribs, and the red cranberries bobbed around her shoulders.
She was crying and trying to stand, and she could not.
I stood waist-deep in my father's bog in my grandmother's dress, with the cedar boom holding the harvest around us in a red ring.
My groom stood in front of me with my hand in his.
He did not look at me.
He looked down at my sister and said, "Mais."
He said it gently.
Then he looked up and said, "Luce, I was going to tell you tonight."
"Tonight," I said.
"After the vows. After the supper. I wanted to tell you in private."
I knew what I was looking at, and so did every wolf on the dike.
In the Mullica pack, a she-wolf who carries a pup cannot hide it past the fourth week.
At the first gathering after that, her body walks her to the sire and sits her down at his feet.
She cannot stand again until the moon sets. We call it the Pull.
Brant Applegate, the pack's Alpha since March, still held my hand.
"I swear it, Luce," he said.
The oldest of the three Boom Wives waded forward with the hem of her black skirt floating out around her.
The Boom Wives hold the boom at every Flooding, and they keep the pack's customs.
Not one of them had ever spoken kindly to me.
"The Sitting takes the vow," she said, loud enough for the whole dike. "That is the custom."
"Brant Applegate, you take the hand of the one who sits."
A murmur went along the dike, and then it stopped.
Three hundred wolves stood on the clay bank in their church clothes, and not one of them moved to help me.
My mother stood at the front in her navy dress with her hand flat over her mouth.
Brant's fingers tightened around mine.
"Luce, it's the custom," he said quietly. "Nobody has to be hurt."
Maisie looked up at me through her wet hair.
"I tried to stay home," she whispered. "I swear I tried."
"I know you did," I said. "You've been sick for two weeks. You skipped the bridal supper."
I had brought her ginger ale on Tuesday.
I had held her hair back over my own bathroom sink, and I had told her it was nerves about my wedding.
She was four weeks along.
My sister's sick stomach had a date on it.
It was the September moon, when Brant told me he had to drive to Trenton for pack business.
On Thursday I had stopped drinking the Boom Wives' tea, the cedar-bark tea that keeps any man's seed from taking.
It stays in a woman for a week after her last cup.
I had meant to start my first pup tonight, with him.
I took the Applegate ring off my thumb.
It had been his grandmother's, and it was too big for every finger I had.
I held it out over the water between us, where the berries lay thickest.
"Luce," Brant said. "Don't."
I let go of the ring.
It went down through the berries without a sound.
"She can have the custom," I said. "She can have the ring and the pack and the man who tells his bride tonight."
Brant opened his mouth.
I pulled my hand out of his.
Before the Boom Wife could draw breath, I turned my back on all of them and walked out.
No bride in the Mullica pack had ever left a Flooding.
The water dragged at my skirt with every step.
The berries parted ahead of me and closed up behind.
"Lucinda Sooy," the Boom Wife called. "The vow."
I did not turn around.
At the far end the dike was a steep bank of wet clay.
The whole pack stood on top of it and let me climb.
My mother's hand came down to me.
I took it, and she hauled me up the bank, and she did not say anything.
She looked at my face and then past me, at the sand road beyond the dike.
"Go," she said. "I'll bring your shoes."
I walked down the far side, barefoot, with berries stuck all over my dress.
Outside the pack's land, a truck stood on the sand road with its tailgate down and a cedar pike pole across the bed.
A man leaned on the fender with his arms folded.
I knew him by sight.
He was the Stray who built the boom.
Every October he cut the cedar logs and chained them.
Then he stood on the wrong side of the dike all day in case the chain broke.
The pack paid him in berries and never said his name.
He straightened up when he saw me coming.
My foot went out from under me on the clay, and a hand closed around my elbow before I fell.
His palm was hot through the wet lace.
The cold went out of my whole arm.
"You're shaking," he said.
"I'm furious," I said. "It's different."
He looked past me at the dike.
Three hundred wolves were watching a Stray hold the Alpha's bride by the arm.
"Miss Sooy," he said, low. "I'm not allowed to take you anywhere."
"You're not taking me," I said. "I'm going."
I pulled my arm out of his hand, walked around the front of his truck, and opened the passenger door myself.
"Drive," I said, and I got in and pulled the door shut.
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