One Minute Younger Always Second Best Until I Walked Out the Door novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: The Moot
Roxana's POV
"Get up, Colt," I said.
He stayed on the boards.
"You're not kneeling to me. You're going to stand there and listen to what you did, with your face up."
He lifted his head, slowly, and got to his feet.
His eyes were red.
He stepped to one side and stood with his hands empty, and nobody in that hall looked at the grey jacket on the floor.
The doors opened.
Three Alphas from the other valley packs came in with their Betas behind them, in their good coats, and took the long bench under the east windows.
None of them looked at me first.
They looked at the ledger.
Orrin struck the floor with the black staff.
"The Moot is open," he said. "The Beta of Ironwood Ridge speaks first. By the old law, he may speak against his own Alpha."
He did not go up on the dais.
He stood where I stood, on the floor of the hall, among the rest of us.
"Twenty-six years ago," Orrin said, "I stood in the Radley birth cabin with Hiram and the midwife. Two babies came into the world that night. The girl came first."
The hall made no sound at all.
"I wrote the family book. Hiram told me what to write, and I wrote it. I put the son first and the daughter second. I did it with my own hand."
He pointed at the ledger under my arm.
"The midwife wrote the real clock the night it happened. Hiram kept her slip, and I kept my mouth shut. Every Radley birthday I ate the cake and said nothing." His voice broke. "I am the reason she was ranked second for twenty-six years, and I will answer for it however the Moot decides."
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