The Alpha Hunts Every Runner, and I Took Him Down novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Mated

"Ready for what?" Soren said into my hair.

"To choose it."

He went still against me on the pine table.

"The bond," I said.

"I'm not saying it tonight, or on a moon, or in front of a crowd, or after a fight."

"Then when?"

"On a day nothing else is riding on. A plain day. A Tuesday."

I felt him smile against my shoulder.

"You'll tell me when it's a Tuesday."

"You'll know it when it's boring."

It took until October to find one.

There were eleven cabins to reroof, and a mill to restart, and a pack that wanted to be fed and heard.

There were two audits, and a new treasurer who cried every time he stood to speak and did it anyway.

On the Tuesday I chose, the Hunter's Moon was three days off.

I was standing in my own yard with a splitting maul when the Council walked up my road.

All of them came, the miller and the schoolteacher and the feed-store owner.

Sigrid walked in front, with her cane ticking on the gravel.

Behind them came Dell, with her mother, and the old man in the feed cap.

A long straggling line of Blackfir who'd been driven out and brought home followed.

I leaned the maul against the woodpile.

"If this is an audit," I said, "I'm not wearing a bra."

The schoolteacher laughed and then covered her mouth.

Sigrid stopped in front of me and looked up with her pale, tired eyes.

"Alpha Halvorsen," she said. "The pack has a question."

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