Chapter 15: What He Swore

Corbin was still on one knee with my hand on his arm.

He looked at Sabine, and then he looked at me.

"Let go, Rhiannon," he said quietly. "I'm going to walk."

I let go.

He got up. It took him two tries, and nobody on that hill helped him.

He crossed the ring with blood running down his fingers and stopped in front of the Stone.

"Swear it," Sabine said, soft and sure. "Swear the boy is yours."

Corbin laid his palm on the cold rock.

"The boy is not mine," he said.

The sound that went through the pack was not a gasp. It was lower, and it went on.

"His father is Ironridge's beta," Corbin said. His voice was hoarse, but it carried.

"I knew by his scent the hour he was born."

"I signed his name into my line because Hollowmere was two months from bankruptcy."

"Thirty families were going to lose their houses. Alpha Whitcombe said the price was my signature."

"I paid it. And I told you all for five years that he was my son."

He turned and faced two hundred wolves.

"I lied to every one of you at every pack meal."

"I let a child call me Papa because it was useful."

"I let his mother stand at my side as if she had earned it."

"I have no excuse."

A man near the front, gray in the beard, spoke up. "You took us through the lean winters on that loan."

"Yes."

"We ate that bread."

"Yes," Corbin said. "On a lie. You're owed the right to say what you think of it."

Nobody said anything.

I stood at the edge of the ring and watched a proud man take every blow he had earned.

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