Chapter 18: Third Dusk

Brigid's POV

The stranger walked down the middle of the Moot Hall as if he had been invited.

He was tall and heavy through the shoulders, with a white scar from his ear to his chin.

Six wolves came behind him in grey coats.

The one at his right hand was lean and hawk-faced and wore a black leather glove on his right hand only.

"Ironridge," said the old man with the cane, quietly. "Four days' ride east."

"Two, if you don't mind a hard road," the scarred man said.

He stopped in front of Kellan and looked him up and down.

"You're younger than I thought. Does the cuff fit?"

"What do you want?" Kellan said.

"The valley."

He said it the way another man might ask for the salt.

"Your father's name is struck, and your line is called a murderer's line."

"I have ears in your cabins. I read the compact on the road."

He smiled.

"A pack whose Alpha is a killer's son has no claim. Any neighbor may challenge for the seat."

"The compact says no such thing," Hester snapped.

"It says it in the third clause, witch. Read it."

Silence.

Then the elder who had wanted Kellan dead stood up on the far side of the hall.

His face was gray and set.

"He is within the compact," he said.

"I sent word to him myself, the night Aldric died. I thought the pack would want a clean Alpha."

I stared at him.

"You called him here to kill Kellan," I said.

"I called him here to save the valley from a boy and a rogue."

"The vote was three hundred to one."

"The vote struck an article," the elder said. "It did not make Kellan Alpha."

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Hid My Sister's Killer, So the Alpha Poured Truth Down My Throat from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.