Chapter 17: The Ring

The Ridgeline Alpha read his own challenge aloud, so that no one could say they had not heard it.

He was a lean, gray-eyed man with a cane he did not need.

He stood in the great hall with the two Alphas who had walked out at his shoulders.

The room was fuller than the day Theron fell.

I stood at the back with Garrick, because Torin had asked me to, and because I had not yet decided to listen.

"By the old right," the Ridgeline Alpha said, "I name the Crown unfit."

Nobody spoke.

"For eleven years the King has hidden what belongs to the packs.

"Women sent in good faith were not honored. They were stolen."

"Stolen," Torin said, from the dais. "They were in a cell."

"They were ours."

The Ridgeline Alpha turned to the room.

"I do not ask the Council to punish him," he said.

"I ask for the ring. Let the Crown prove it can still hold what it took."

The envoy folded her hands.

"State the stakes," she said.

"If the King falls, the Crown passes to the victor.

"Every woman in the sealed valley is returned to the Alpha who sent her."

A sound went through the hall.

I felt my own pulse in my ears.

"And any child born to one of them," the Ridgeline Alpha said, "goes back with the mother to the pack that sent her."

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