Chapter 12: How His Mother Died

My father stood in the water with his hands open at his sides.

Both packs watched him from the banks, and neither one made a sound.

"Say it here," I said. "All of it. Not in a kitchen, not in a corridor."

"Hazel."

"You took my blood at my own birthday and let me think the Goddess had forgotten me."

"You can say it with the whole valley listening."

He swallowed.

His bad shoulder was shaking.

"Thirty-two years ago, a girl from our pack left to be mated to the Alpha of Blood Moon," he said.

"I grew up with her. She was my friend."

Ronan's hand tightened around mine.

"She wrote to me every month for a year. The first letters were full of joy."

"I know," said Ronan, very low. "My father told me how they changed."

"By the spring they were full of fear."

My father's voice cracked.

"She wrote that she couldn't eat, and that she was tired all the time."

"The last time I saw her she weighed less than a child."

"She held my hand and made me swear."

"Swear what?" I asked.

"That no girl of Silver Dawn would ever be taken by a Blood Moon bond."

"That I'd keep every one of them safe."

He looked at me, and his face crumpled.

"When your mother died, you were nine, Hazel. You had nobody but me."

"Then you turned eighteen, and the Alpha of Blood Moon was standing at our gate."

"So you decided I would rather live than choose."

"I decided I'd rather you hate me for forty years than bury you in one."

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