One Minute Younger Always Second Best Until I Walked Out the Door novel · Chapter 20 of 24
Chapter 20: Alpha by Blood
The healer bound my arm in front of the whole Moot because I would not leave the hall.
The silver had left a grey line from wrist to elbow, and it would scar.
I did not mind.
The white-haired Alpha waited until the last knot was tied.
Then she stood at the table with the ledger open in front of her and the midwife's slip beside it.
"Pack law is older than any of us," she said. "The Alpha seat goes to the firstborn child of the Alpha. A firstborn wronged of the seat may challenge before the Moot, and the Moot hears it."
She turned to my brother.
"Colt Radley. You hold the seat by a false record. Do you contest the challenge?"
Colt stood in the empty space where the grey jacket had been.
"No," he said.
His voice carried to the back wall.
"I never earned it. I won't fight for it."
"Then the seat is vacant by your yielding."
"Yes."
"And the Moot may fill it with the firstborn by blood."
"Yes."
She looked at me.
"Roxana Radley. Do you claim the seat?"
There was a long moment in which I thought of the easel and the cake and my father's small figure in his chair, waiting for me to kneel.
"I claim it," I said.
Orrin struck the floor with the staff, and the sound went through my boots.
"Then bring the cord."
They carried my father forward on his cot.
Two wolves held him half upright.
The silver cord of the Alpha lay on the blanket over his chest, and he lifted it in both shaking hands.
It took him a very long time.
I knelt beside the cot, not because anyone asked, but because I wanted to be at his height.
He slipped the cord over my head and settled it on my collar.
It was lighter than I had expected.
"You left without the Radley name," he whispered.
"I did."
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