Chapter 9: The Truth in the Hall

The Claiming Hall was full again.

Four hundred wolves stood shoulder to shoulder under the old beams, and the room smelled of wet wool and nerves.

I walked in with Wystan on my left and ten Silverfen wolves behind me.

The crowd parted.

I wore my own dark jacket.

My hands were bare, with no token around my neck.

Every eye in the hall followed me up the aisle, and nobody laughed.

They had heard about the rogue fight.

Joran Wolcott stood alone on the dais, and Osric Marrow sat in the elder's chair beside it with both hands folded on his stick.

Verity stood on the other side in a pale blue dress, with her burned palm wrapped in a white cloth.

Joran did not look at her.

He looked at me.

"Pack," he said.

His voice was thin, but it carried.

"Five days ago, I stood on this floor and rejected Ilse Penhallow. I said she was too weak to be Luna."

The murmur of the crowd died away.

"I said it because I was afraid of her."

I did not move.

Nobody in the hall breathed.

"She refused to make it easy," he said. "So I did it myself."

A woman in the front row shook her head slowly.

"There is more," Joran said. "Look at me."

He pushed up his sleeve.

The veins in his forearm were thin and gray.

"Five days ago I could break a man's arm with two fingers. Today I can't shift. I fell down the stairs of my own house. Ask the healers."

A hundred voices rose.

"Is he sick?"

"What's wrong with the Alpha?"

"It was never my strength," Joran said.

Silence.

"I wore her strength for six years and never asked where it came from. You called her weak. I was the one who was empty."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Alpha Who Rejected His Queen from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.