The Alpha Rejected Her at Midnight, Then the Land Chose Her novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Hunt Is Called

Rowena stepped between the torch and the stone.

"Put that out," she said.

Orson smiled at her. It was a slow, kind smile, and she had seen him wear it at funerals.

"Look who's found her voice," he said. "Boys. The stone."

Two of his wolves started forward.

Lachlan stepped in front of them with the pages still in his fist.

"Touch it and I break your arm," he said.

"You don't give orders tonight, Alpha. You're a sick man with a hanging bond and a Council that no longer trusts him."

Orson lifted his head and bellowed toward the gate.

"Pack to the fire! Every wolf! Now!"

They came running.

Half the pack was still awake from two nights of gossip, and they poured out of the trees in coats and boots and bare feet.

Junie's mother came, and the kitchen women, and the elders. Within minutes there were a hundred wolves in the clearing, all staring at the torches.

Orson climbed on a stump so that everyone could see him.

"Hear me," he shouted. "I have kept this pack safe for thirty years. Tonight I tell you the truth I have kept from you."

"That girl is no wolfless orphan. She is Hartnell blood."

A murmur went around the clearing, and a few of the old ones flinched at the name.

"The Hartnells were a plague on this valley," Orson said. "They cursed it. The Founders cleared them out to save us all. And now one has crawled back, and she has bewitched our Alpha."

"That's a lie," Hester said sharply.

"She's under the Alpha's protection, and he's lost his head. Look at him. Look at what she's done to him."

The torches swayed. Somebody near the back said, "Plague wolf," and somebody else picked it up.

Rowena looked at the faces around the fire.

She knew every one. She had stitched their children's knees and carried their trays and served their suppers.

Not one of them would meet her eyes.

Beside her Lachlan said, low, "Rowena, don't."

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