Chapter 18: Last Words

The Elder's lodge sat at the end of a dirt road, a low house with a stove that never went out.

She had set three chairs in a half circle around a small table.

On the table lay a black recorder the size of a bar of soap.

Ronan took the chair on my left, and I sat with my hands tight in my lap.

"I have not played it," the Elder said again.

"He gave it to me the day before he died, and I swore on my own seat to keep it shut."

"Why wait until now?" Ronan asked.

"Because he told me when to open it. After the funeral, before the Rite, in front of the girl."

She pressed the button.

For a moment there was only hissing.

Then came a cracked, dry voice that I knew from the bed in the lodge.

"This is Alpha Garrow," it said. "I'm speaking on my last Saturday, and I'm in my right mind."

Beside me, Ronan went still.

"I told the Dunbar girl my part at my bedside," the old man said.

"I did not tell her the rest. I am saying it here so the pack hears it from my mouth."

The Elder's cane tapped once on the floor and was silent.

"The Dunbar girl lives. I have sat in a room with her."

"She is her mother's daughter, steady and quick, and she doesn't even know what she is."

My eyes burned.

"The seat is not my son's," the voice went on. "It never was."

"I ordered him to find her and keep her asleep so that he could take what wasn't his."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Discarded Housewife, Chosen by Her Protector from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.