My Gown Had No Gems, So I Walked Out of My Own Bonding Ceremony novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: What I Could Carry

Her father strikes her name from the roll in front of the pack women, her mother will not call the gems a lie, and Jasper is waiting on the woodpile with twenty-two thank-you letters she never wrote.

"Ask my father why," I said to Jasper, and kept walking.

"I did," he said. "He told me you refused them."

"Then you've heard everything he has to say."

He did not follow me past the treeline.

I went around the back of the lodge instead of through the front, because I had nothing on my feet but satin slippers and my coat was hanging by the kitchen door.

My breath was shaking by the time I reached it.

The kitchen was full.

Twenty pack women stood among the covered trays of the bonding feast, and they went quiet when I came in.

On the table, the cake my aunt had baked for me sat untouched with its candle unlit.

The Snow Moon beta stood by the stove with a folded paper in his hand.

He would not meet my eyes.

My father came in behind me, still in his ceremony furs, and the room made space for him.

"Read it," he said.

The beta cleared his throat.

"By order of the Alpha, Clara Winslow's name is struck from the Snow Moon roll," he read. "No wolf shall feed her, house her, or speak for her at Council."

"Dad," I said. "Four hundred people heard you lie about me."

"I did what I had to do." He said it quietly, and nobody argued.

"She's twenty-two," said my aunt. "Gordon, it is eight below tonight."

"Then she can go to the man we promised her to."

My father walked out without looking at my mother, who stood very straight by the pantry door.

The women started talking all at once, and none of them was talking to me.

Margot was waiting at the foot of the back stairs.

She had changed into a soft grey sweater, and she was holding a black trash bag in both hands.

"I packed your room," she said. "I got the important things, your charger and your good boots, the photo from Grandpa's funeral."

"Thank you," I said, because it was kind of her, and because I was so cold I could barely feel my mouth.

"I'll keep everything else safe." She squeezed my arm. "Clara, go and talk to Jasper tonight. Say you were overwhelmed. He'll still bond you."

"I'm not going to say that."

"Then let Dad cool down and I'll talk to him first thing."

She took off her own wool coat and put it around my shoulders.

It smelled of her rose soap, and it was warm.

I put my arm through the sleeve.

Under the coat, the bag held the photo, the boots and the charger.

It did not hold the savings book I kept in my desk drawer, with four years of barn wages in it.

I thought about going up to get it.

Then I heard my father's boots on the floor above, pacing, and I did not go.

Cecily caught up with me at the back door.

She pressed something small and cold into my palm.

It was an old phone with a cracked screen, and a charger wrapped around it.

"It's mine from two years ago," she whispered. "It still has data. My number is the only one in it."

"Cecily."

"I should have said something in the circle." Her whole face was wet. "I froze. I'm so sorry, Clara."

"What would you have said?"

She opened her mouth, and nothing came.

I squeezed her hand and went out.

My mother was standing at the top of the porch steps with a lantern.

She had been waiting for me, and she had been waiting alone.

"Go to Coyle," Mama said. "Tonight. Bond him tomorrow and be done with this."

"You didn't say it was a lie, Mama. In the circle, when I asked about the boxes."

"I said not here."

"Then say it here."

She looked at the lantern.

"It is the last thing I will ever ask of you," she said.

I understood then that my mother was not going to say anything at all.

I went down the steps with the trash bag over my shoulder and Margot's coat on my back and no name on the pack roll.

The snow was deep at the foot of the stairs, and I plowed through it toward the road.

Someone was sitting on the woodpile at the edge of the lawn.

He had been sitting there long enough that there was snow on his shoulders.

Jasper Coyle stood up when I stopped.

"You've been here three hours," I said.

"Four."

"Why?"

"Because your father says you refused my gems," he said. "And somebody has been writing me very warm thank-you letters in your name every spring for twenty-two years."

He took a bundle from inside his coat, tied in string.

"I have all twenty-two," he said. "I'd like you to read them."

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