Chapter 10: What He Signed

Ansel's POV

She didn't say anything after I told her.

She walked out of my office with her back straight and her hands closed into fists, and I let her go.

I had told myself for a year that I would let her go, whatever she chose.

I had not understood what it would feel like to watch it.

I stood at the window and counted the floors she took down.

I could feel her on the stairs, not in the elevator, because she didn't want to be where I had stood.

The thread in my chest pulled tight with every flight.

It had pulled like that every night for a year, and every night I had pushed warmth down it, the only thing I was allowed to send.

She had called it stubbornness.

I had let her.

When the thread went quiet at the Hollow floor, I left my office and went to find her father.

The guest wing was on twenty-two, two doors down from the Colters, which I had arranged on purpose.

Gregory Ludlow was standing in the middle of his suite with all five sons around him.

Nobody had unpacked.

He turned to face me, and for the first time since I had known him he did not look like an Alpha.

He looked like a man who had been holding something heavy on his own.

"Your Majesty," he said.

"Gregory."

I took the writ out of my coat.

It was a single sheet of Crown vellum, sealed in black wax with my own crescent.

I held it up where all six of them could see it.

"The year is done," I said. "The oath is lifted from every wolf of Silver Creek. You may say whatever you like to her, to each other, and to me."

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