His Mate, Her Choice novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Signer

The hall went so quiet I could hear the fire in the grate.

I stood in Ansel's cloak with my feet bare on the boards and my hair wet with sweat.

Nobody looked at Halvard now.

Two hundred wolves were looking at Dain.

"Majesty," said the eldest. "You have heard the charge."

"I have."

"Did you sign the order that destroyed Hollowmere?"

I had known he would answer.

I had not known how much I would want him to lie.

"Yes," said Dain.

He stepped out in front of the Council table, alone, and he took off his coat and laid it over the back of a chair.

He stood with his hands empty, in his shirtsleeves.

"I was twenty," he said. "My father had just died. Alpha Halvard brought me a report that Hollowmere had poisoned him."

"A forged report," said the Alpha on the left.

"Yes. I have the physician's own word that it was false, and my clerk will give you the rest. But I'll tell you now, so it's said before anyone else says it for me."

His voice did not shake.

"I signed that order. I pressed the Crown seal into the wax myself. I never read the names on the list, and I told myself the children had gone to kin."

"He read every one," said Halvard. "I stood at his shoulder."

"Alpha Halvard has said that to me in private," said Dain. "He says it now in public. I say he is lying."

"Of course you do."

"And I will not ask you to take my word over his."

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