Chapter 30: Tobias and the Pack

I leaned into the bars and told my father her name.

I said it once, low, in his ear, and I am not going to write it down.

It was hers.

He closed his eyes and put his good hand over his mouth, and his shoulders shook without a sound.

I did not touch him.

I walked out past Elias and up the stairs.

I did not look back until the door at the top of the cellar had shut behind us.

"Did he deserve it?" Elias asked, slowly, on my palm.

"No," I wrote back. "She did."

Then I went to the hall, because Tobias was waiting.

He had been waiting for three days.

He knelt on the bare boards in front of the Alpha's chair with his rope coiled in his lap.

His hands, blistered from the stones, rested open on his knees.

The pack stood along the walls.

Two hunters who had watched him strangle me in the courtyard stood near the front, with their arms crossed and their jaws set.

I sat in my father's chair, and it fit me badly, and I did not care.

"Tobias Ward," I said.

"Alpha."

"Say what you did."

He lifted his head and did not look away.

"I went into the room to prove I loved you," he said.

"I came out believing you'd killed my mother."

"I put my hands on your throat in front of the whole pack. I squeezed until you went grey. Elias pulled me off."

His voice was steady, and every word cost him.

"Then I led a hunt after you and your guard on the Alpha's order."

"I would have killed you both in the road if I had been able to."

"You weren't able to."

"No."

"Why?"

"I don't know," he said. "Something in me got out for one breath."

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