I Was Never Their First Choice novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Going Home

The sunburned one was splitting kindling in the courtyard when we rode in.

He looked up, saw me on the grey horse with my arm in a sling, and dropped the axe.

"You went south?" he said. "Did you tell them?"

"Everyone," I said. "The girl is home with her mother. The shaved one is back at his father's forge."

He stood in the snow with his mouth open, a lean man of twenty-two with a peeling nose, and I saw Bram wipe his eyes with the back of a glove.

Kjell dismounted.

He walked across the courtyard and stopped in front of the wolf.

"Your term is closed," he said. "You may go home, if you wish, and you will be given a horse, a purse and my letter to your Alpha."

"Which pack?" Bram asked, softly. "I always forget."

"Redwater," the sunburned one said. "It's a month's ride east."

"Then you'll leave tomorrow," Kjell said.

The sunburned one looked at him for a long time.

"Is it true?" he said. "What they're saying in the kitchen. That the lots are done."

"Yes."

"No more of us."

"No more of you," Kjell said. "The envoy is writing the notice tonight. The Hold will not accept a wolf who did not ask to come."

"Then who's going to haul ice?" said the sunburned one, and his voice broke in the middle.

I got down from my horse.

I went to the sunburned one and put my arms around him, and he held on to me with the axe-calloused hands of someone who had been lonely a long time and refused to say so.

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