Chapter 20: The Conclave

They brought Harlan into the great hall at dawn with his hands chained in front of him.

He had been given a clean shirt.

It hung off him.

Nine lords sat on either side of the dais, and the king sat above them in a plain black chair.

Behind them, filling the hall to the doors, stood every wolf of Cold Fork who had come up the mountain.

I sat to the king's right, with Torren on my other side and Dalton standing behind my chair.

He had asked to stand.

I had let him.

"Harlan Hesketh," the king said. "Senior elder of Cold Fork."

"You are charged with the theft of my daughter, and with poisoning her for fourteen years."

"You are charged with taking her child from my nursery, and with the beating of two Highcrown guards."

Harlan raised his chin.

"I am an old man," he said. "I have served Cold Fork for fifty years."

"I did what the pack needed. I'll answer to the pack, not to a king who lost his own child."

A hiss went through the hall.

The king's hand tightened on the arm of his chair, and he said nothing.

I stood up.

"Open the ledger," I said.

A lord took the brown book from the table and turned the pages.

"Fourteen years of tin purchases," he read.

"From an apothecary in the lower valley, a tin a month. Wolfsbane, ground and mixed with valerian, with the dose marked."

He turned to the page after.

"The dose goes up in the autumn of her twentieth year. Next to it is written, in this hand, 'She dreamed of running. Doubled.'"

Keep reading free with an account. Start Rejected in Labor: The Lycan King's Stolen Daughter from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.