Chapter 17: Every Claim

Corbin's POV

I climbed the ridge alone at dusk, because I wouldn't let the beta carry me.

My shoulder was stitched, and my legs were not mine.

Every step up the frozen path I thought about how little of my strength had ever been mine to spend.

The Stone-keeper was waiting beside the slab with her stick and a lantern. She did not look surprised.

"You are cut to pieces and you climbed a hill," she said. "Sit."

"I'll stand."

"Then stand badly."

I stood badly.

"I came to ask something," I said.

"You came to ask me to cut the bond."

"Yes."

"I can't." She said it mildly. "The Stone does not sever for one side. It asks the other. Rhiannon has not asked."

"Then what can I do?"

She studied me for a long time. The lantern made her face look older than it was.

"You can give up your claim."

"My claim."

"To the thread. Every claim you have on it, by right of the bond, by right of your name."

She pointed her stick at the slab. "Say it with your hand on the Stone, and it holds for life."

"What happens to me?"

"You become what you were the day your father died." Her voice stayed even. "A good wolf and not a great one."

"You are an Alpha only if this pack votes it. No one will fear you who doesn't choose to."

I thought of the study floor at dawn.

I had woken there with her scent on my shirt and my wolf warm and strong under my ribs. For the first time in five years I hadn't been afraid.

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