Chapter 13: The Council Comes

Nobody in the room could look at anyone else.

Odette's father was the first to stand.

His pack elder's sash had slipped, and he held on to the back of his chair.

"A log can be written in any year," he said. "Anyone can stamp a folder."

"Then call Meadowland," my lawyer said, without raising his voice. "Their council keeps a copy of every log it stamps."

Odette's father opened his mouth and shut it again.

Odette's mother began to cry, the same thin, high crying she had done on my hospital floor.

"She only wanted him to be happy," she said. "She was eighteen too."

"She was eighteen," Hester said. "And she sent me down a hill in the dark to stand in an empty greenhouse while a boy died in my house."

She had not shouted.

She stood up, a head shorter than Odette's father, and he stepped back.

"Get out of my pack's room," Hester said. "Both of you. You will not speak her name on Westridge land."

"Hester, we have known you thirty years."

"Then you should have known better."

They went.

The forty wolves along the walls moved aside to let them through, and none of them said goodbye.

Kellan had not gotten up from the carpet.

I wheeled myself past him to the door, and he lifted his head.

"Willa."

I did not stop, and I did not turn.

Keep reading free with an account. Start After He Left Me to Freeze, I Rejected Him as My Mate from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.