Chapter 20: The Fall of the Alpha

Heath sat on the Stone with his back to the dawn and his hands between his knees.

The meadow was already full.

Nobody had gone home.

Ridgemoor stood on the wet grass in coats thrown over what they had slept in.

The visiting packs stood behind the keeper's chair.

I walked up the slope with Torben one pace behind me, and Maisy and Imogen on my other side.

Heath lifted his head.

He looked like a man who had not slept in three days, which was the truth.

"Mags," he said.

"Luna."

He swallowed.

"Luna," he said.

The old woman cleared her throat.

"The Moon has spoken," she said. "The Luna of Ridgemoor will give judgment, and this Moot will hear it."

I stood in front of the Stone.

I had spent five years being told what a Luna was.

I had run her kitchens and counted her linens.

Nobody had ever asked me what I would do with the seat.

"Heath Castelnaud," I said. "Stand."

He stood.

"You will say what you did," I said. "Yourself. With your own mouth."

"The Moot has the case."

"I know what the case says. I'd like to hear you say it."

He had never said the hard thing in his life.

He had let others say it, a mother or a Beta or a note slipped under a plate.

His throat moved.

Then he said it, in a voice that carried badly across the meadow and then very well.

"I knew from the first night that she was the Moon's," Heath said.

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