I Was Never Their First Choice novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Do Not Tell the Girl

I picked the ledger up off the floor and laid it on the table.

Kjell stood at the window with his back to me, pulling on a shirt.

He did not offer to turn the pages for me.

The left page was the one I had seen on my third night, headed SILVERBROOK in heavy ink.

Under it were two entries.

The first was dated a year ago, in the spring.

"Request to the Alpha of Silverbrook," I read aloud. "The elder daughter of the pack. Eighteen. White wolf, seen once under moon. Solveig Sandiford."

I read it twice.

Under it, in a smaller hand: Reply received. Sent in her place a farrier's son, nineteen.

"A farrier's son," I said.

"Your father told the envoy you were too valuable to the pack," Kjell said. "He offered the boy at the usual eleven wagons. For you he asked for twenty."

"Twenty wagons."

"I would not buy a person," Kjell said. "So he kept you, and sent the boy."

I turned the page, and my fingers were cold.

The second entry was dated this winter.

Request repeated. No answer by the lot date.

The envoy was to wait and see whom the bowl produced.

If it produced another wolf, she was to take that one without argument.

Under that, in a different, ugly handwriting I would have known in the dark: She will be provided at the lot.

I took the key from my pocket with a hand I could not keep still and knelt in front of the chest under the window.

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