Chapter 23: Own Door, Again

Our first fight happened in front of forty people, over a man with a broken leg.

The Cinder Ridge alpha had been brought to my hall on a litter, with a splint on his knee.

His hundred wolves waited outside in the snow.

He lay on the bench by the stove and would not look at me.

His second, a gray-haired woman with a hard mouth, stood at his shoulder and spoke for him.

"He asks for mercy, Alpha. He asks to go home and heal."

"And lead your pack again," I said.

"If you allow it."

The elders sat along the wall.

Tobin stood by the door in a new hat, which he had in fact been given.

Duncan sat at my right hand, with his bitten shoulder under his shirt and his mark on my neck.

I had meant to ask him what he thought, after.

I had meant to ask him in private.

I opened my mouth.

"No," said Duncan.

He said it to the room, in the voice I had first heard in my head on the worst night of my life.

"He challenged a mantle and lost. Under Crown law, a challenger who loses forfeits his own."

"Cinder Ridge goes under a Crown steward until the spring."

The gray-haired woman went pale.

Forty people looked at me.

I felt something go cold and still behind my breastbone.

"Excuse me," I said.

"Morven."

"I'm the Alpha in this hall. This is my ruling to make. You're my guest."

"I'm the King."

"You're a guest who sits at my right hand because I put you there."

The silence was very thick.

Tobin made a small noise and found something fascinating in the ceiling.

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