The Luna He Failed to Protect novel · Chapter 23 of 32

Chapter 23: No Answer

Alder didn't answer.

He sat in the Alpha's chair with the moonlight just short of his boots.

Four hundred wolves waited for him.

I could hear his heart from the floor.

It was going slow and wrong.

"Father," Cale said.

Alder lifted his head.

He looked at the seven boxes first.

Then the account book on the stone.

Then me.

"I didn't know about the money," he said.

His voice was a rasp.

"I believe that," said the elder. "It isn't the charge."

Alder's hands moved on the arms of the chair.

"The Ash Line holds the border," he said. "Somebody has to stand on it. Every Alpha before me sent wolves there."

"Sent them," said the elder. "Or sent them to die?"

Alder opened his mouth.

He shut it again.

I'd watched that man carve the solstice roast for thirteen years.

I'd never watched him look for a word and not find one.

"Answer it, sir," said the lumber father from the floor. "My boy was nineteen."

"Answer it," said the last girl's mother.

Then someone on the benches said it.

Then someone else.

It went around the round hall low and steady.

Answer it. Answer it. Answer it.

Alder put up his hand.

The hall went quiet.

"I knew what a no-return posting was," he said. "Every Alpha knows. My father knew. You send a wolf south with that stamp, and you don't expect a letter back."

Nobody breathed.

"I signed hers knowing it," he said, and didn't look at me. "I signed all of them knowing it. I told myself the pack was cleaner for it."

He let his hand fall.

"I can't answer the charge," said the Alpha of Greyhollow. "I've got no answer to give."

The elder bowed his head.

He stood like that a long moment, his white beard on his chest.

Then he straightened and struck the stone once with his stick.

"The Alpha cannot answer," he said. "The charge is true."

The sound that came out of the benches wasn't a cheer.

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