This Time, I Won't Beg for His Mark novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Down the Valley

Joss's POV

Hester Ellington brought me soup on the second morning.

She came down the cell stairs alone, in her cardigan, with a covered pot and a folded paper, and she told the guard to wait at the top.

She set the pot on the floor just outside the bars and smiled at me.

"You must be starving, Alpha Galloway."

I could smell it from where I sat.

Monkshood, under the onions.

I didn't say so.

I wanted to see what she had come to ask.

"I won't pretend I'm not fond of that girl," Hester said. She sat down on the guard's stool and smoothed her skirt. "I did raise her."

"I heard."

"So I'm going to make this easy for everyone."

She slid the paper through the bars with two fingers.

It was a deed.

My father's name and mine were typed at the top.

Under them was the winter pasture on Ridgeback's north side, forty acres of the best grazing in the valley.

"Sign it over to Cold Spur as reparation," she said. "The council drops the knife charge. You go home."

She tilted her head.

"Valerie comes home too, to the cottage and the mark, and nobody says one more word about challenges."

"And if I don't sign?"

"Then the full moon comes, and the council does what a council does with a man who put silver in an Alpha's back."

She said it kindly.

I looked at the paper for a long moment.

Then I put it back through the bars and slid it across the floor with my boot.

"No."

Hester's smile did not change.

"Eat your soup, dear. You'll want your strength."

"I'm sure."

She stood and picked up the pot herself.

"She'll come back, you know," Hester said, at the foot of the stairs. "I've watched it for thirty years. A claimed wolf goes back to her Alpha. The yard feels empty and the bed feels cold, and one night she walks up the drive."

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