Chapter 23: The Moon-Line Seat

Maureen did not run.

She stood in the river with a hundred wolves kneeling around her and her paper going soft in her fist.

"Get up," she said to them. "Get up this instant."

Nobody moved.

"I am your matriarch!"

The oldest Cedar Hollow elder rose from the back row. His knees cracked, and his voice was steady.

"No," he said. "You were."

Two of her own warriors stood, the ones who had beaten Sabine.

They took her by the arms.

Maureen screamed. It was a thin, high sound, and no one on either bank flinched.

"Clara! Clara, I made you! Everything you are, I made!"

"No," I said. "You hid it."

They marched her up the bank and into the trees. I watched her go with my heart beating slow and hard and gold in my ears.

My wolf paced inside me, wide awake.

She wanted to run. I told her to wait.

The Cedar Hollow council met at three in the pack hall.

I walked in with Torin on one side and Pia on the other, and I noticed that nobody at the high table looked at the floor.

They looked at me.

Maureen's chair stood empty. The elders had put her in the cellar cell under the hall, with two guards at the door.

Rhett stood on the floor in front of the council, in a clean shirt, with a swollen jaw.

"I'm still Alpha," he said.

The hall was silent.

"My mother lied to me," Rhett said. "She lied to this pack. I was a victim of her. I'm as much a victim as anyone here."

"You faked the fits," someone called. "Then you let her bury her garden for six years."

"I was twenty-seven! I was frightened of her!"

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