This Time, I Accept Your Brother's Claim novel · Chapter 20 of 32
Chapter 20: Proof
The chamber waited for me to cry.
I could feel it waiting.
"Whose pups?" I said. "Read your ledger, Alpha. The names are all in it."
I walked down off the dais.
I didn't run. I made myself walk the whole length of that room, past the Alphas and the Elders and Piers on his little stool, at the pace of a Queen.
Behind me I heard Auden stand.
"This Council's done," he said. "Go home."
He caught up with me in the long corridor.
He didn't say anything.
He took my hand and walked me out the back of the palace, across the kitchen garden, to the gate where the Run had started.
The moon was coming up over the ridge, a little past half.
"Run with me," he said.
"I'm not in the mood to run."
"You're in the mood to bite somebody. Better a mountain than an old man."
I looked at him.
Then I pulled my dress over my head and let my wolf have me.
It had been years since I'd let her all the way out.
Fifty years, in a way.
Piers had never liked her. I'd kept her small.
She came out of me now in one long ache of bone and fur, and I was on four feet, and the whole night opened up.
Pine. Lake. Deer somewhere upslope. A fox under the gate.
Auden.
His gold wolf stood beside me, all legs, the pale stripe over his eye.
He bumped his shoulder into mine, hard, and took off.
I went after him.
We didn't take the chute.
We took the trail, all eleven switchbacks, side by side and then not, snapping at each other's heels on the turns.
I was smaller and faster on the corners.
He was bigger and cheated by cutting the last bend.
I hit the summit a length behind him, furious and laughing, and threw myself at him, and we rolled across the stone together.
When I came back into my own skin, I was lying on Moon Rock.
The slab was still warm from the sun.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of This Time, I Accept Your Brother's Claim are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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