Chapter 25: The Unsaying

Bram's POV

The chair lit gold, and every wolf on the hill looked at it.

I looked at Mira.

She stood inside the silver ring with her chin up and light running along her collarbone, and she was not afraid.

My father stepped forward before the murmur could grow.

"There," he said, in the soft voice he used for funerals. "You see what the girl is, and you see what my son swore."

He turned to me.

"Bram Thackwray. Accuse her."

His hand lifted, and I felt the black thread around my ribs pull tight.

It was half burned already.

Mira had done that in the lodge cellars, with her palm on my heart.

But half a thread still holds.

"Accuse her," my father said, and the Alpha's weight came down on me.

My knees began to bend.

I held the vow in my mouth, the words I had said at ten over my mother's ashes with his hand on my head.

I had said them every night for eleven years.

I knew them.

"Bram," Mira said quietly.

She did not ask me to do anything.

She only said it, and the gold in her marks pulsed once against the thread.

I locked my jaw and pushed the words the other way.

"I swore on my mother's ashes," I said.

It came out hoarse, and the whole hill went still.

"I swore to hunt the last dragon and kill her."

"Good boy," my father said. "Now finish it."

"No."

I lifted my head.

"I unsay it."

His face did not change, but his hand closed.

The thread bit into my ribs.

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