Too Old for My Alpha, Worth the Wait for His Rival novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: The Moon-Bond

Alexander's POV

I walked her out past the lodge gate to the edge of the road, where the gravel ran out and the pines began.

The full moon stood over the trees, and her face was silver in it.

She had a splint on her left arm and a bruise down the side of her jaw.

She had never looked more like the girl at the Gathering.

"I never asked you," I said. "Twenty years ago, I didn't get the chance. I'm asking now."

"Alexander."

"Finish the moon-bond. Not because the pack needs it, and not for a seat. I would ask you if you had nothing at all."

She looked at me for a long time.

"You'll want it done properly," she said. "In front of your pack."

"My council will make a speech first."

"What kind of speech?"

"The kind about heirs."

She huffed out a breath that was nearly a laugh.

"I'm forty-six," she said. "I know what the speech is."

"You don't have to stand through it."

"Alexander, I've stood through a worse one in front of two hundred people, with a cake knife next to me." She took my good hand. "Yes. Take me home."

The Ash Mountain lodge was lit up when we drove in.

All forty-one wolves of my pack stood in the great room.

Six elders sat in a row at the long table, with my beta at the end of it, holding his hat.

They had heard about the Moot by phone, hour by hour.

They had heard that I had been burned, and they had heard about the stones.

The oldest of them, the woman with the cane and the white braids, did not stand.

"Alpha," she said. "We are glad you are well. Now sit, and hear us."

"I'll stand," I said.

She sighed.

"You mean to complete the bond with the Cedar Fork woman," she said. "We do not question the moon. We question the timing. You are forty-nine, and this pack has not had a pup born in three years. An Alpha needs a line. Catriona Cedarquist is forty-six."

The room was silent.

I opened my mouth, and Catriona laid two fingers on my wrist.

"May I answer?" she said.

The old woman's eyes narrowed. "You may."

Catriona stepped forward until she stood in the light, in a borrowed coat with her arm in a splint.

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