Not the Bride He Wanted novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Spare

Thursday supper at the Ridge lodge had been the same my whole life.

Long tables, venison stew, the Alpha at the head, everybody's children under everybody's feet.

I walked in at six with my mother's midwife bag over my shoulder and Tilde behind me.

Sixty people stopped chewing.

My father was at the head of the table with his napkin tucked into his collar.

He saw me and set down his spoon.

"You've got some nerve," he said. "You cut my cord in front of seven packs."

"I did."

"Then you've got no seat at this table."

"I don't want one."

I walked down the middle of the room between the benches.

The children went quiet.

The old women at the elders' table put down their bread.

I stopped across the table from him.

"Aksel says you paid him to run off with Kirsten," I said. "So I'd be the one who went to the King."

A murmur went down the benches.

My stepmother, beside him, stared at her bowl.

My father wiped his mouth with his napkin.

He took his time.

Then he looked at the room, not at me.

"I'm a father," he said. "I did what any father would do."

"Say what you did."

"I kept my baby girl out of that man's bed."

His voice rose to fill the hall.

"You've all heard what he is. He killed his own blood with his hands. I wasn't sending my Kirsten to that."

"So you sent me."

He shrugged, a big lazy shrug.

"The treaty says a daughter. You were a daughter. You were always the sturdy one."

He picked his spoon back up.

"Somebody had to pay the bill, Brenna. You never had anything better to do."

Nobody laughed.

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