The Cursed Blood novel · Chapter 23 of 32

Chapter 23: Alden's Last Days

Nobody in the ring moved.

The wind came over the ridge and lifted the singed edge of his fur collar.

"You'll say it again tomorrow night," the old man said. "In front of every pack. Same words."

"Same words." The beta didn't look up from the pearls.

The east-slope alpha thumped her cane on the frozen ground.

"We'll sit with him," she said. "All thirty of us. In shifts."

Her wolves sat down in a ring behind the wardens, soot and all.

I looked down the mountain toward the valley.

"Alden has to hear it," I said. "From me. Before the council."

Conall was beside me. He didn't argue.

"Noon," he said.

"Noon."

Margaux was waiting at the marker when I got there.

"I'm coming," she said.

"You don't have to."

"I know the front door," she said. "You know the kitchen one. Between us we can get in anywhere."

The ground went dead under my feet past the marker.

The rot came up my arms.

The valley smelled of wet ash.

Down at the foot of the Gap road, the stacked timber was a black heap, still smoking.

The two new trucks sat on their wheel rims.

The cook stood in the kitchen door with flour to her elbows.

She tore a heel off the loaf in her hands, walked across the yard, and pushed it into mine.

"You'll eat that," she said. "You look like a broom."

Then she went back inside.

Margaux stared after her.

"She never gave me bread," she said.

"You never carried a tray."

The Alpha was home this time.

He was sitting by his son's bed in the sickroom with his boots on and his coat still on.

On his right hand, a heavy gold signet caught the window light. It was very bright. Hardly a scratch on it.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Cursed Blood from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.