Chapter 14: Courier

Every head in the courthouse turned to the Alpha's chair.

A challenge can't be refused.

But the pack waits to hear the Alpha say so, because the way he says it tells them who's going to win.

Jarek stood up.

It took him two tries.

The first time, his hand slipped off the arm of the chair.

"Accepted," he said.

His voice should have rolled out over the room.

It didn't.

It got to about the fourth bench and stopped.

The grandson smiled.

Posy put a hand on Jarek's sleeve and looked up at him with shining eyes, the brave little woman behind her man.

I turned and walked out before I said something that would get me banned from the rest of Montana.

The parking lot was dark and full of trucks.

June lit a cigarette she'd been saving since 2019.

"Three to two," she said. "That old buzzard."

"Two said no," I said. "Two Elders looked at him and said no."

"Two Elders and a laundress with one good arm." She blew smoke at the stars. "I'd take her over the other three."

Abel had stopped walking.

He stood very still between two pickups, his head tilted, like a dog hearing a whistle.

"Abel?"

"Do you smell that?"

Diesel.

Wet gravel.

Four hundred wolves who'd been sitting too close together.

And under all of it, faint and sweet, the smell from the vial.

Young omega.

Tansy.

The hair on my arms stood up.

"Where?"

He pointed with his chin.

At the far end of the lot, a gray van was backing out with no headlights on.

No windows in the back.

A man in a ranch coat was driving.

He'd parked behind the courthouse, where nobody parks.

"That's one of the senior Elder's hands," June whispered. "He works the cattle on the ranch."

The van turned onto Mill Street.

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