Alpha's Regret: The Luna He Left Behind novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Ledger

It took Hoyt's knife to open the clasp.

The seer sat at my mother's table with the book open under the lamp, and her milky eyes moved along the lines.

Thane sat across from her.

I sat at the end of the table with my hands folded, because otherwise I would have put them on the book.

Trudy had woken, and now she stood against the stove with a blanket over her shoulders and said nothing at all.

"Old script," the seer muttered. "Three hundred years of Ellerby women who thought their handwriting was clear."

She turned a page.

"Here. Gifts at the point of death."

Nobody spoke.

She read it aloud slowly, in a flat voice.

"When a mate lies dying at the Alpha's side, the bond may give her half of his strength to hold her in the world. This is the Goddess's mercy. The gift is not lost to him. It is held in her, and the bond between them carries it."

"Held," I said.

"Keep listening." The seer's finger moved down the page. "If the giver cuts the bond, the gift does not return to him. It is locked in the one who received it, for her life. Never reject the mate you have given to. You will be weak for the rest of your days, and she will be strong."

The seer stopped.

The lamp hissed.

"Is that all?" Thane said, very quietly.

"No."

She turned the book on the table so that I could see it, and put her thumb under the last lines.

They were in a different ink, newer and darker, in a small neat hand I knew.

I had watched that hand write my dosages for five weeks.

"It's a note in the margin," the seer said. "Dated the week after the ford. It says: Father thinks it will go back. The old pages say it locks. Either way he will be too weak to hold the seat by the Winter Moon. Don't tell Thane."

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