I Married the Alpha They Threw Away novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: The Hunter's Price
Bram didn't sit in the chair.
He stood in front of it with his raw wrists at his sides and looked at two hundred and forty bowed heads.
"Get up," he said. "All of you. I've had six years of people looking at the floor when I walk by."
They got up.
It took a while, with the old ones on the stairs.
"Here are my terms," Bram said.
"Twelve people on the north shore were thrown out of this pack for being old, or hurt, or widowed, or wolfless."
"They come home tonight with their rank, and they eat at the front table."
"Anyone who wants to argue can argue with the old man with the shotgun."
Somebody laughed, shaky, near the doors.
"And the council sits where my wife can see it," Bram said. "That's all."
The eldest elder nodded without a word.
He took the cracked leather book down from the loft himself, and opened it on the table, and wrote in it with his shaking hand.
Then he turned it around for me.
Neve, of the high line, of the north shore.
Under it was my mother's line, in faded brown ink, and her mother's under that.
I put my finger on it and couldn't speak.
"The north shore was always theirs," the white-bearded Alpha said gruffly. "Now it's yours."
They judged Imogen an hour later, in the hall, under the skylight, with the whole pack watching.
The four Alphas didn't take long.
"She took a queen's life with a knife," the white-bearded Alpha said. "She took a girl's wolf with a teacup."
He looked down at Imogen on her knees in the silver cuffs.
"So we'll take hers."
"She goes to my pack's cells at Tupper Lake for the rest of her life."
"And every morning of it, somebody brings her a cup of bitter-moon, and stands there until she drinks it all."
Imogen lifted her head.
Her silver bob hung in her eyes.
For the first time, she looked her age.
"Who pours the first cup?" the Alpha asked.
The widow had walked in from the north shore an hour before with the rest of the outcasts.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of I Married the Alpha They Threw Away are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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