Chapter 20: Accepted

Lachlan stood ten feet from the stone and looked down the barrel of the rifle.

It was pointed at Rowena.

His body moved before his head did. He took one step and stopped, because Orson's finger shifted on the trigger.

"Don't," Orson said. "Alpha."

"You said nobody dies."

"Nobody has to. She decides."

Thirty hunting wolves stood behind Orson with their own guns up.

The pack had flattened back against the trees. Mothers dragged children behind them. Junie had her teeth bared and Hester's fist in her collar.

Rowena looked at Orson for a long moment.

Then she looked at Lachlan.

It was the first time she had looked at him since dawn.

Her grey eyes were steady. They held no fear he could find.

"I said I would answer on the stone," she said.

She stepped onto the flat rock.

The stone was warm under her bare feet.

He could tell, because the moss lifted where she stood.

The old carved name showed pale beneath her heels.

"Lachlan Kerr rejected me in front of this pack," Rowena said.

Her voice carried to the back of the trees.

"He did it for a coward's reason, and he's paid some of it."

"He isn't done paying."

"But I'm not saying this for him. I'm not saying it for you either, Orson."

She turned her head and looked at the rifle.

"I'm saying it because I want to be free of it."

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