The Alpha Hunts Every Runner, and I Took Him Down novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: Judgment
"Put it down, Orrin," I said.
He thumbed the wheel, and a small blue flame stood up in the dawn.
The fumes from the shed hung thick over the grass between us.
One spark, and the shed, the book and the man would go up together.
"It's all in here," he said.
He patted the leather in his lap.
"Every Sitting for two hundred years. Burn the book and nobody remembers who held the seat."
"Sixty wolves heard Sigrid read the Stone."
"Wolves forget."
"The line is cut in granite behind your head."
"Granite weathers."
He was not looking at me.
He was looking at the flame, and I saw what his face wanted to do.
I did not think about it.
My body did what it was taught to do at three thousand feet, when the ground is coming up.
I dropped low and drove.
I took him at the knees.
It was a plain tackle, and a good one, and it took his feet out from under him on the fuel-wet grass.
The book flew, and the lighter spun out of his hand.
I heard it hit the ground.
I rolled him away from the shed with my whole weight on his chest, as far as I could, into the dew.
The little flame touched the wet grass and winked out.
For a long second we lay in the dim, both gasping.
Orrin Dahl stared up at me with an expression I hadn't seen before.
"Again," he said, in a cracked whisper. "You took my feet. The way you took his."
"Get up."
"You're just like him. The first Luna."
"Get up, Orrin."
I rolled off him and stood, and filled my lungs, and shouted one word down the Ridge.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Alpha Hunts Every Runner, and I Took Him Down are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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