The Alpha Hunts Every Runner, and I Took Him Down novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Boon

By dark the Stump was so packed that people stood on the pool table.

The Council had voted the Halvorsen stand back to my name that afternoon.

It was forty acres of cedar and a cabin with a leaking roof, and Dell had decided that called for a party.

She stood on the bar in her apron with a cake shaped like a skidder.

"To Greta Halvorsen!" she yelled. "Who stood in front of a machine and didn't blink!"

"Greta!" shouted the room.

"And to her father, who could read a river and a ledger!"

"Hal!" they shouted, and I had to put my forehead down on the bar.

The old man in the feed cap bought me a beer.

A woman I had gone to school with gave me a casserole dish and a hug that lasted a full minute.

Jorgen stood by the door with his hands in his pockets.

Three of the mill hands pulled him in among them and put a pint in his fist.

He looked at me over their shoulders, and I lifted my glass.

He lifted his back, and his eyes were wet.

Sigrid Brekke had come for the first half hour.

She'd eaten a slice of pie in her corner booth, watching the room with her pale unreadable eyes.

When I tried to ask her about the creek she set her fork down.

"Tomorrow, girl," she'd said. "Dance tonight."

"You said something to Orrin."

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