The Alpha's Slave-Born Daughter Made Kings Kneel novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Edric's Truth

My father stood at the foot of the Hill of Black Stone with his wrists held out.

Behind him, four hundred wolves of Greyhollow stood in the road, silent, and not one of them looked up.

I walked down the gate road in my dress with my hair still loose from the night, and I stopped in front of him.

My mother came down the road behind me on the old woman's arm.

She was thin, and she was pale, and she was standing without help.

Evander stood at the top of the road in borrowed boots.

He stayed there.

"Say it," I said to my father. "In front of them. Why you never looked at me."

Edric Storrow lifted his head.

He was fifty-six years old, and he looked eighty.

"The day I bought your mother," he said, "King Kray's riders were still in the lands around the Moon Court, hunting for the Queen."

"I took her out of a slave pen with a rag on her head. I knew her by her eyes."

"You could have sent her back."

"Kray had put a price on her head. A bounty in gold. I thought I'd sell her to him." His voice cracked. "And then I looked at her, and I couldn't."

My mother said nothing.

"So I kept her," Edric said. "And I hid her as the worst thing I could think of. A thrall. A mute, scarred, hurt thing that no one would look at twice."

"You hid her with knives," I said.

"I let the pack use her, because a thrall nobody cares about is a thrall nobody checks." His eyes shut. "That was my reason. That was the whole of it. It was easier than standing up."

A low sound went through the pack.

"And me?" I said.

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