Chapter 13: The Keys

The mason's dust was still on my name.

Not my name. Hers, cut deep in the grey slab where mine had been.

Cecily stood in front of it with her hands clasped and her eyes lowered, and the whole square watched her do it.

"I didn't ask for this," she said, softly, to the people nearest. "I only want to help."

Nobody argued with her.

That was the thing about Cecily. She was so useful that arguing felt rude.

I stepped off the hall steps, and Bettina's hand slid off my arm.

"Isla," Bettina said, low. "Don't."

"I'm not going to hit her."

"I know. I'm saying I would."

I crossed the square and stopped an arm's length from the Stone.

Cecily looked up and gave me the same warm smile she had given me over two years of feast days.

"You look tired," she said. "Let me bring you something."

"Don't bring me anything," I said. "I still have your thermos. I'll return it when I return the rest."

The smile held. Her eyes did not.

Behind me, boots rang on the cobbles.

Torin came across the square with Hugh a step behind him.

He did not look at Cecily. He did not look at the Stone.

He took a ring of keys from his coat, heavy iron ones, the kind that open a house built by hand, and he put them in Hugh's palm.

"The lodge," Torin said. "Every door."

"Torin," said Hugh.

"The Alpha's house belongs to the Alpha. I can't hold a shift, so I can't say I am one. You hold it until the Moon. Nobody sleeps in it."

Cecily's father pushed through the crowd.

"The Council named my daughter acting Luna. The Luna lives at the lodge."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Alpha's Regret: Rejecting His Fated White Wolf Mate from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.