The Alpha's Claim on the Border Ledger novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Widows Cross

Five days later it was stipend day, and I had nothing to pay.

Lorna sat in the guest house under guard, silent, with her hands in her lap and her wolf still not quite back.

Osric sent no word.

That should have worried me more than it did.

I was on the wall at dawn with Torvi, counting the days on my fingers, when she said, "Rhona. Look at the ford."

They were coming across the stones in a long ragged line.

Women with shawls over their heads.

Old men on sticks.

Children carried on hips and backs, and a few led by the hand, stepping from rock to rock with the water at their knees.

I stopped counting at forty.

Every one of them had a line in my book.

I went down the steps so fast I almost fell.

The widow from the mess hall, the thin grey one, was already at the gate, and she had her grandson by the hand.

"They stopped the stipends the morning you spoke at the ford," she said. "Osric's men took the last of the flour from the mill store."

"We came to the only person who ever counted us properly."

"We want sanctuary," said another woman, a big one with a baby on her shoulder. "Under your name, Miss Rhona. Not the Alpha's. Yours."

"Mine?"

"Ashdown's girl," she said, and every head in that line bowed a little.

I put my hand over my mouth.

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