The Alpha Crowned the Orphan, So Both His Betas Followed Me Out novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Back Table
At the Fall Moot Kenton hands the Hearth Chain to the orphan Sissy and puts his wife at the back table; Shyla unhooks the chain from Sissy's neck, drops Kenton's ring in his tea and walks out, and the Warden and the healer walk out with her.
Kenton stood up in my father's chair and told a hundred and fifty wolves that Sissy would take my place from tonight.
My mother's chain was already around her neck.
I was standing at the long table with a pan of cornbread in both hands.
It was the pack's big autumn supper, in the hay barn, and every face in the place had turned to look at me.
"Shyla will take the back table with the help," Kenton said, smiling down the room.
"She's good with a pot, and she knows where she stands."
Sissy touched the little river pearl on the chain and looked at the floor.
That chain had been my great-grandmother's, then my grandmother's, then my mother's.
I was supposed to wear it tonight, and it had been in my dresser drawer at noon.
Sissy had my mare since the spring, and my mother's wedding-ring quilt since August.
Both times the pack had said the same thing to me.
"Let her have it, Shyla. She's got nothing."
An old man by the stove said it again now, kindly, into his coffee.
Then Kenton leaned on the back of the chair.
"And y'all know it's only right," he said. "She never even wore my mark."
A few people laughed, low and uncomfortable.
It was true, and everybody in that barn knew it.
Eight years I had worn his ring, and my shoulder had never carried a mark.
Kenton had told me a mark was for old families, and I had believed him.
I set the cornbread down on the nearest table.
I walked the length of the aisle with a hundred and fifty wolves watching my boots.
"Shyla," Kenton said.
Sissy took a step back, and I took hold of her chin, not hard.
"Hold still," I said.
"Kenton!" she said.
He didn't move, because he did not think I would do it.
I found the clasp under her hair and undid it.
The chain came off warm from her skin, and I closed it in my fist.
"Take the quilt," I said. "Take the mare. Take the chair, if it makes you feel tall."
"This was my mother's."
Nobody said let her have it that time.
I walked up to the head table and pulled the ring off my finger.
It left a pale band on my finger.
I dropped it in Kenton's glass of sweet tea, and it sank to the bottom.
"There's your mark," I said.
Then I turned and walked back down the aisle, and nobody stopped me.
At the door a man was holding my father's old canvas coat.
It was Tobe Yocum, the pack's Warden, who had not said ten words to me at any Moot in eight years.
He was six-four, and the doorway looked small around him.
He didn't ask me anything.
He settled the coat over my shoulders, and his knuckles rested against the back of my neck.
They stayed there a moment longer than they needed to, and they were warm.
His sleeve rode up, and I saw the pale half-moon scar on the inside of his wrist, the one he said was from a heeler.
Behind him, Jubal Sparlin held the door open with one hand.
He was the pack's healer and the vet in Jasper, and his shirt cuffs were buttoned to the knuckle, which was how he always wore them.
"It's cold out," Jubal said. "You'll want the heater on. I'm just saying."
"Tobe," Kenton called from the far end of the barn. "Jubal. Sit down."
Tobe didn't turn around.
"No," he said.
"You walk out with her, you're no wolf of mine."
"Then I'm not," Tobe said.
"I'm going to need that in writing, Kenton," Jubal said. "For the insurance."
Nobody laughed at that, but I saw an old woman near the front press her lips together hard.
I stepped out into the cold with the chain biting into my palm.
My truck was parked where I had left it that afternoon, with a bucket of horseshoe nails still on the seat.
I got in, and I put the chain around my own neck and fastened it.
Tobe went around to the passenger side, and Jubal climbed into the back.
I did not tell either of them to get out.
I turned the key.
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