Chapter 7: Dinner at the Hall

"You'll stay for supper," Josiah said, as if offering me a biscuit.

"I have patients."

"Then they'll keep. The whole pack dines in the hall tonight, the last supper before the Hunt Moon."

He patted my hand once more and let go.

"I'd hate for them to think the healer hid from her own people."

He had me, and he knew it.

If I left, I was a coward who had run from the rejected girl's seat.

If I stayed, I was in his hall for three hours with a hundred ways for things to go wrong.

"Send word to the clinic," I said. "My patients need to know where I am."

"Of course, my dear. Of course."

I did not believe a word of it, so I sent my own word, in my own way.

I walked to the east window and put my hand flat on the glass.

Anyone watching from the ridge could see a woman standing alive.

The supper hall seated six hundred.

Long tables ran the length of the room under iron chandeliers, and every head turned as I came through the door.

I wore my smock and rubber boots, because I had not been told to dress, and every other woman wore velvet.

Josiah took me by the arm and walked me straight to the high table.

My chair sat beside Maddock's.

"You look well," Maddock murmured, and pulled it out for me.

"You said that already."

"I mean it more tonight."

Across from us sat Fenella in a red silk dress that had cost more than my truck.

She had scrubbed the mud out of her hair and put her smile back on, and her eyes could have cut glass.

Her father the Beta sat beside her, silent as a post.

I ate nothing.

Halfway through the second course, a server in a white apron slid a plate of bread in front of me.

He leaned down to fill my glass.

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