Alle Kapitel von Alpha Bikers: Kapitel 31 – Kapitel 40

KNOXGrayson officiated because I chose him and because the alternative was Elder Petra, who was the most senior council member still present and technically the traditional choice, but who had spent forty-eight hours under pack arrest and was, I felt, unlikely to bring the appropriate energy.Grayson took this responsibility with the gravity it deserved, which is to say he spent two days preparing notes and a further day arguing with Riley about whether he could include a joke and she said no and he didn't include the joke but you could tell it cost him something.The ceremony was pack-only. Small. The inner circle — the wolves who'd been with us in Nevada, a handful of core pack members who'd made the trip, no elders from the old council. No ceremony hall. We used the property outside Reno that the pack had held for a decade, the one with the open land and the good sight lines, because Riley said she didn't want to be indoors for this and I didn't argue.I'd left the dress in her ba

KNOXI cried through the whole ceremony.I want to be accurate about that. Not the tasteful-single-tear version but the actual version, which involved Grayson passing me a handkerchief about halfway through Riley's vows and me using it without shame because there are things that are bigger than your dignity and this was one of them.The vows she'd written were — I don't know how to describe what it is to hear someone you hurt very badly enumerate, in front of witnesses, the exact nature of what was broken and the exact nature of what was rebuilt. The blood-red dress and the shoebox. The kitchen floor. The bikes and the road and the barn in Utah, which she referenced without explaining and which nobody else in the field needed explained.She said: "You were seventeen and you were clumsy and you wrote me fourteen letters and none of them were good and all of them were true and I kept every single one. That was always going to be the part of the story that mattered."The pack was quiet.

KNOXI ride in the morning now.Same roads I've been riding for three years, since we settled the pack land and built what needed building and I started needing an hour every dawn to let the wolf run quiet before the day started. The early mornings here are something I didn't expect — not the quality of them, exactly, because I'd been told the area was beautiful, but the specific way they've started to feel. Like each one is its own small complete thing.I think about the five years sometimes. Not obsessively. Not with the weight it used to have. More the way you think about a scar you've had long enough that it's just part of your topography — you know it's there, you know how it got there, and you don't look at it expecting it to be something else.The feral period. The whiskey. The silences at four in the morning that I now know were Riley nursing the twins, three thousand miles away, the bond carrying just enough warmth to keep me from going completely under.I processed it.I sto

RILEYI thought about it for four hours.That's how long it took me to go from *I'll think about it* to sitting on the floor of bay two at eleven-fifteen at night making a list on the back of a parts invoice because I'd run out of space in my head and needed to externalize the problem.The list, as it stood:Reasons to go to the pack council meeting:They're going to make decisions about us whether we're there or not.Reyes came here, which means she thinks my presence matters.Knox needs me there. (He hasn't said this. He won't say this. It is nonetheless true.)The twins need this to be resolved.I have spent five years managing situations I didn't ask for. I'm good at it.Reasons not to go:Every room full of wolves that gets to decide what category I belong in is a room I'd rather not be in.The twins.The way pack councils historically treat half-bloods who show up claiming Luna status.I don't want to want this.I looked at the fourth item in the second column for a while.That

RILEYThe council room was wood and stone and old light. Seven elders at a long table, facing a single chair in the center of the floor that they'd tried to make look like a seat rather than a dock and hadn't entirely succeeded.I sat in it.Knox was to my left, standing, which nobody had told him to do and nobody had told him not to. Grayson was at the back of the room. I couldn't see him but I could feel him there, that specific quality of Grayson being present in a room — organized, watchful, very still.Elder Vasquez led the session. The others ranged from openly hostile to carefully neutral. Reyes, at the far end of the table, had an expression I couldn't read."Ms. Harper." Vasquez's voice was formal, the voice for occasions. "You understand why you're here.""You want to determine what category I belong in," I said.A slight pause. "We want to formally assess your standing within the Blackthorn pack structure. This is standard procedure for—""For half-bloods who've produced Al