"I don't accept you" — he shouted it in front of everyone novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Hearth Right

Moon Hall was fuller than the night before.

Word of the cafeteria had crossed the territory in an hour.

Wolves stood three deep along the walls and out the doors into the yard.

Ezra stood at the back, arms folded, with a dozen Black Fork wolves behind him.

He had not been invited.

Nobody told him to leave.

My father took the dais in his gray suit.

Celia sat on the front bench in white with her hands in her lap, face washed clean, eyes lowered.

I had to hand it to her.

She could look like a victim in front of two hundred people who had watched her chat on a wall.

"A Hearth Right," my father said. "Under the oldest law of this pack, a daughter under her father's hearth belongs to that hearth. She may not be sheltered by another Alpha without his consent."

His voice was calm and strong.

"My daughter Imogen was taken in by Black Fork without mine. I demand her return, and I demand Alpha Duncannon answer for it."

Murmurs ran around the hall.

Some of them were on his side.

I could hear it.

"Imogen Harwick," my father said. "You will come home."

I stood in the center of the floor.

I had not planned what I would say.

I only knew that if I let him finish, I would never leave.

"I'd like the Seer to speak," I said.

My father's eyes snapped to me.

"The Seer has no part in this."

"Hearth Right is a pack law," I said. "The Seer keeps the law. I want it read."

The old woman on her stool had not moved.

Her milky eyes rested on me for a long moment.

"The girl is correct," she said. "I keep the law."

"Seer," my father said carefully.

She rose with her staff.

"The Hearth Right," she said, in a voice that filled the hall. "A father holds his child until the child is of age. At eighteen, the child is a wolf in her own right and belongs to no hearth but the one she builds. No father may call her back. No Alpha may keep her."

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