Lahat ng Kabanata ng After the Alpha Rejected Me, I Came Back with His Twins: Kabanata 81 - Kabanata 90

Damien's POV"Say the word and we will have the first load over by noon."He was a carter with a grey muzzle and forty years of coal behind him, and he said it at the mouth of the cut with his hat in his hands, the way wolves used to, and for a heartbeat my mouth wanted to answer him."That is not mine to say.""It has never taken a Council to open a road.""It takes the wolf whose name goes on it. Theo says what the ground will carry. Cole says what goes over it. Neither is me. The ground needs Theo's signature and traffic needs Cole's decision." I got my maul off my shoulder, because standing still while a wolf waits on you is its own kind of answer. "Ask me about post spacing and I will talk until you are sick of me."He looked at the maul and went away up the line, and I heard him put the same question to somebody else before he had gone thirty feet.Theo gave me the day's work at first light off his own book: three jobs written out, the last to make good and re-lay the crossing s

"Take the lock out.""It is a good lock," Cole said, not arguing — making me say it in front of the wolf who would have to pay for a new one."Four grooved keys were cut for that lock in the year Damien's father died. Two are in this house and checked in place. One came out of a boot heel and is in a sealed bag in the case record, and it is not going back into any door. One has never been accounted for." I put my hand flat on the door. "And two grooveless copies exist that nobody can tell me who cut, or who paid, or in what year. A lock you keep half of is not a lock.""Then it comes out this morning," he said, "and the cost is mine to explain, at the yard and not in here."That was the twelfth of February.It is not the first thing the judgment did. The offices went the afternoon it was read, and the lines that keep one old wolf off my road were in force before we left the hall. This is the next physical safeguard.The smith had the old lock off before noon, and Ames took it as it ca

"I want to finish the Rejection."Mara did not write anything down, which is how I knew she had heard the whole of it."Finish," she said. "Not end. There is no such thing as ending it. One of those words is a wolf changing her mind about a man and the other is a sentence nobody in this valley can say except you, and I want to be certain which one has come through my door.""The second one.""Then we will do it properly, and you will hate the first part, because the first part is me telling you what it is and what it is not."It was February twenty-third, six days after I had written my name into the private appointment slot. Door shut. No reason beside the entry. She had not asked me for one in the days between, and she did not ask now."A rejection declared by one wolf is not a rejection," she said. "His half went on this Pack's record three years ago and it has sat there since, complete in itself and completing nothing. No Council finishes it. No Alpha, no Elder, no panel of three

Damien's POVThe crew head had the week's list in his hand on February twenty-seventh and did not hand it over."Theo wants to say it in front of you first," he said, "and I want to hear him say it, because I am the one who has to live with it."So Theo said it in the yard with nine wolves listening, which is how he does anything he means."The offer I made you stood from the fifteenth and I held it back until there was thaw work worth putting a wolf on. That is this morning. Ordinary wages, ordinary hours, paid in the same line as every other wolf on that crew. You report to him." He put his thumb at the crew head. "Every job written and initialled, the way the singles have been. Same standard as the rest, no softer and no harder. If a wolf brings you a question that belongs to me and you answer it, this ends that afternoon, and I will not discuss it with you or with anybody else.""Understood.""It is not a post.""I know what it is.""Then take the list off him, Kane, and stop stan

"The second week of March went past and I did not send for it," I said, "and you are going to hear why before you are kind about it. I had no carriage money that week, and I was not going to book a cart I could not pay for and find out in front of a carrier's boy that I am the woman who cannot pay."The post office in the town has a grille and a woman behind it who listens badly, and I stood at it on March twenty-fourth with my coat still done up."Right," said Dani. "That is the first thing you have said in three years that I did not have to translate. Now be quiet. I have been busy."The carrier who would have taken it in the second week is not coming near here until May. She had asked him without being told to, and asked two other yards besides, and one of those is running a part load up to the town at the end of the month with room on it. A part load is cheaper than a piece on its own. She read the figure out twice and I wrote it on the back of my hand."Say yes and I will hold it