I Cut My Alpha's Bond, So the Lycan King Came Hunting novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Bridge

The Sauk bridge is a steel truss two lanes wide, and I had counted its tree line before the trucks stopped rolling.

A parley is a parley.

I had lain on a hill over Lowwater nine years ago, and the lay of the land was already doing the sum for me.

Ansgar stood at the center of the span with his hands open and thirty Guard behind him.

On the other end Dacre Vaughn stood in his black coat with his left arm in a sling.

Twelve Lycans in black stood in the trees at his back.

Mercy and six vets stood at mine.

Nobody was closer than forty feet to anybody.

"Cassia." Ansgar's voice carried well over water. "You've had a terrible night, and I'm sorry for my part in it."

I said nothing.

"The Peace of the Sauk is forty years old," he went on, to the Lycans now, to the vets, to the river. "Nobody here wants it to end over one troubled girl. Sergeant Coleridge was a decorated Ranger, and she was also, as I'm afraid I must say, unwell."

"Unwell," Mercy said, behind me, very softly.

"At Lowwater, nine years ago, she acted alone. No order from this office. No order from anyone. She took the Pack's rifle and fired on a King at a peace table, and Eckert has carried that shame in silence since."

I felt it in my teeth.

Not a sound came off the Lycans in the trees.

"I am here to correct that," Ansgar said. "She is disowned. I hand her to the King of the Lycans, in good faith, for his justice. Let the matter end."

He stepped aside and swept a hand toward me.

Every head on the bridge turned.

"A written order," I said.

I heard my own voice crack across the water.

"You wrote it. In your hand, sealed, the night before. I have it."

For one instant, less than a breath, his face did something I had never seen it do.

It stopped.

Then the warmth came back, and he said, gently, "If you do, my dear, it's a forgery. I'd be very curious to see it."

"You will."

"At the Court?" he asked.

"At the Court."

"Then we're agreed," Ansgar said, "that this ends there. And until then my Guard will take custody of the prisoner."

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