Chapter 16: Duncan's POV: The Gathering Eve

Duncan's POV

The Cinder Ridge alpha sat down at Black Pine's long table without being asked.

He took the head chair, the one the elders had put back after they carried Hester's out to the woodpile.

He was fifty, thick through the chest, with a gray beard cut square.

A hundred of his wolves stood along the walls behind him.

I stood by the stove with my coat open and my hands at my sides.

I had put them there on purpose, because I knew what they wanted to do.

Morven sat at the other end of the table, on the bench, with Tobin at her shoulder.

She had not taken the head chair, and I had not told her not to.

"Alpha King," said the Cinder Ridge alpha, and gave me a nod an inch deep.

"You'll be wanting to leave us to it."

"I'll be wanting to stay."

"That's your right. It's a Gathering. All packs may sit." He turned his flat brown eyes on Morven. "Miss MacLellan."

"Alpha."

"I'll say it plain, since I hear you like that. I've nothing against you."

"That's kind."

"A she-wolf doesn't hold a mantle. Not in my pack, and not in any pack on the northern line."

"The Old Law says the rank goes to the mate. It doesn't say the mate keeps it."

"It says she holds it at the next full moon," said Morven.

"And I say a pack of two hundred needs a wolf who can hold it by the throat." He leaned back.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Seven Rejections Later My Second Chance Mate Is an Alpha King from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.