Chapter 44. Two Weeks

June's POV

The co-op trucks came up the mountain road on my forty-third morning at Thornfall.

Four of them, grinding up the switchbacks in low gear, loaded with diesel drums and feed sacks and pallets of road salt. Ines stood at the gate with her ledger pressed to her chest like a shield and watched them come, and when the first driver swung down and handed her the delivery sheet, she read every line twice and then burst into tears.

Nobody had ever seen Ines cry. The whole yard stopped to stare.

"Stop looking at me," she snapped, wiping her face with her sleeve. "It's the diesel. I'm allergic to diesel."

Osric put an arm around her shoulders. She let him. That was how we knew it was serious.

That night, the budget went back to what it had been. Everyone's stipend. The food money. The Alpha's too. Osric made a stew so rich that Davy cried into it, and then Nell cried, and then half the long barn w