A Pack of Their Own novel · Chapter 29 of 32

Chapter 29: The Doors at Moon Rise

There were twelve of them, and they came down both sides of the hall with their rifles at port arms.

Benches scraped as people shoved back toward the walls.

Parents lifted their children off the floor.

The last hunter through the door was the one from the porch. He did not look at me.

"Madam Chair," Alpha Eskildsen said. "The Ironwood writ stands."

"Mixed-blood shifters are put down on sight, and the Council holds the original in its own drawer."

"Your son burned a copy," the old woman said.

"My son is no longer my concern."

"Then whose is the girl?"

"The law's."

He lifted two fingers, and the rifles came up.

Twelve muzzles pointed at the open floor, and at the thirty people standing on it.

Roark stepped in front of me.

I put my hand on his back and moved him gently to my left.

"No," I said quietly. "Next to me."

He took the place without a word. His shoulder pressed against mine.

"Heir of nothing," I murmured.

"Alpha of everything," he said, very low.

Then Callie stepped up on my other side, shaking, in her borrowed dress.

Her small copper wolf was already rippling under her skin.

Teddy came next, and his cheerful face had gone dead serious.

"Father," he said across the hall. "You'll have to shoot me first."

Alpha Eskildsen's mouth tightened. "Teddy."

"I mean it."

My brother and sister moved in behind Callie, shoulder to shoulder, the way they used to stand on the steps.

Mom walked out in front of all of us in her good coat and stopped, with her hands open at her sides.

"I will not move," she said to the hunters. "Not for you, and not for him."

"I've stood in the wrong place long enough."

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