The Alpha Rejected Her at Midnight, Then the Land Chose Her novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: Costs
Rowena looked at the iron ring lying in the frozen grass.
She did not pick it up.
"Get up," she said.
Lachlan lifted his head. "Rowena."
"I said get up. I'm not taking that, and I'm not forgiving you. Don't confuse the two."
He rose slowly. The pack was so quiet she could hear the torch ends spitting.
"Then what do you want?" he said.
"I want a price."
"Name it."
"My friend is somewhere in the dark, so I'll make it short."
She pointed at the stone behind her.
"You stand up there with nothing on your head and nothing on your hand. You tell every wolf here what your family did to mine, and what you said to me, and what you told yourself for five years."
"All of it, out loud. No Orson to tell it for you."
Somebody in the crowd drew a sharp breath.
"They'll leave," Lachlan said quietly. "Some of them."
"Probably."
"A quarter of them. More."
"Then they'll leave." She met his eyes. "You wanted me to pay for your fear at a bonfire, with my name in a hundred and fifty mouths. Now you pay."
He nodded once.
He walked to the stone and stepped onto it, where she had stood in her wolf, and turned to face his pack.
His hands hung empty at his sides. The pale mark where the ring had been showed on his finger.
"I'm Lachlan Kerr," he said. "Until a moment ago I was your Alpha."
"Forty years ago my grandfather came down this mountain with fifty wolves and killed thirty-one people, because they held a valley he wanted. Four of them were children."
"He took the seat afterward and called it the Founders' right. Orson's father stood at his shoulder."
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