The Alpha Hunts the Exiles, So I Let Him Catch Me novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: What He Counted

Unai's POV

I walked to Ezkandra before light, alone, with a shovel I did not need.

It is a long trek from the last pasture to the burned hut.

I kept my head down and walked, because if I stopped I would think.

The beeches were bare and the ground was iron.

At the border stone I stopped and put my hand on the cold rock.

Five years ago a girl had stood here with her braid on the ground at her feet.

I had not been there.

I had been in the high fold with a ewe in trouble, and when I came down they said it was done.

I had her note in my hand by supper.

Do not follow me.

I had obeyed it every day since.

The hut stood a quarter-mile over the line, on Roncal ground, where I had never once been allowed to set my foot.

I set it now.

There was no hut.

There was a square of black stones and a fallen ridge-beam.

There was the char of a goat pen, with grass coming up grey through the ash.

Beside the stones was a grave.

It was a low mound with a flat river-stone at the head, and on the stone someone had scratched a name with a nail.

TXOMIN.

I took off my beret.

Behind me a boot scraped on rock.

It was one of my own wardens, the oldest, a heavy man who had served my father.

He had followed me up the mountain, and I let him.

"Alpha," he said.

"Who was in it?"

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