The Apex They Could Never Own: A Werewolf Romance of Power, Possession, and Fate novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Gathering

The Gathering Hall at Highgate holds six hundred people, and by sunrise it held eight hundred.

They stood on the stairs and in the gallery, and out the doors into the yard.

Every pack in the valley had come, in their good coats, with their cuffs showing.

I came in by the front doors, in my work jacket, with the black cuff bare on my wrist.

Ansel walked at my shoulder, and his bandaged hand hung loose at his side.

Dad and Hattie and Hattie's mother came behind us, and a line of Brough wolves filled in along the wall.

Nobody spoke as I went up the aisle.

The Council sat on the dais in a half circle, and Edmund Corbin sat in the middle with his hands folded on his cardigan.

He looked rested and kind.

"The Answering has been called," he said to the hall, in his soft voice. "By an Apex, by the old law. I will answer, as the law requires. Dara, ask your questions."

I climbed the steps and turned around to face the valley.

My mouth was dry.

"I have two questions," I said. "The first one is for Hattie's mother."

She came to the foot of the dais and stood very straight.

"Say her name," I said.

She said her sister's name aloud for the first time in nineteen years.

I said it after her, to the hall, and then I turned to the Speaker.

"She was Held at Highgate and never came down. Where is she?"

Corbin didn't blink.

"A tragic illness," he said. "She was buried here, with honors."

"You can show the grave?"

"I will see that someone looks."

Behind me Hattie's mother let out a sound, small and furious, and Hattie took her hand.

A murmur went around the hall, and some of the wolves in the gallery were already frowning.

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