Chapter 22: Pass the Potatoes

Freja's POV

"I'm not answering the mate question today," I said.

Eighty wolves leaned in at once.

"I'm answering a smaller one. Do I stay?"

I looked down at the man kneeling in the grass.

"Yes. I stay. Here are my terms, and I'm saying them out loud, in front of all of you, so nobody has to guess."

Ansel's whole body relaxed.

"One," I said. "Every morning, Ansel tells me what he's going to do that day. Every night, he tells me what he did."

"Two. The clinic stays mine. I keep the books, and I keep my own keys. The room over the bakery stays rented in my name."

A small murmur of surprise ran around the ring.

"Three," I said. "The five of us say our plans aloud at every supper. Where we'll eat, when we'll leave, who drives and who pays."

I pointed at the men beside me.

"That starts tonight."

Somebody laughed.

It was Emmett, a big helpless bark of a laugh.

The old man with the bad hip joined him, and then the whole ring of wolves.

"Yes," Ansel said. "To all three."

"You haven't heard the fourth."

"I'll say yes to it too."

"There isn't one," I said. "I just wanted to see you say it."

He put his forehead against my knee and shook with laughter, and I put my hand in his hair.

That evening Garrick Hall smelled of venison stew and wet wool.

The long head table had five chairs in a row, and a sixth that nobody sat in.

It was the chair on Ansel's left.

Nobody mentioned it.

Ansel tapped his fork against his glass, and the hall went quiet.

I had heard that sound once before, and my stomach tightened.

"Tonight I'm going to eat the stew," he said. "Then I'm going to walk the east fence. Then I'm going to go to bed with Freja, if she says yes."

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