The End of Us novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: He Knows

Keith's POV

Three days after the stone cracked, they gave Isla the chair.

The old Alpha's chair stood on a low dais in the Hall, black oak, with her father's pack mark carved in the back.

Every wolf of the Dunstan pack filed past it and bent a knee.

Nineteen of them had crossed the bridge for her already.

The rest came after, one after another, until the line ran out the door.

I stood behind the chair with my hands folded, where a mate would stand, and I tried not to look like a man who wanted to be struck dead.

She wore a plain grey dress and her father's iron ring.

She sat very straight, and she thanked each one by name.

I had heard her called a weak Luna for four years.

I had never heard her called Alpha, and it fit her so well that my chest hurt.

When the last wolf rose, the white-haired elder came forward and cleared his throat.

"Alpha Sheridan," he said. "Custom asks one question of a new Alpha."

"Ask it."

"Who is your mate?"

A murmur ran across the Hall.

Quinton's seat at the foot of the dais was empty.

He had not come.

Isla's eyes did not move to me.

"A mate is not a title to hand out from a chair," she said. "I'll answer when I choose."

"The pack will wish to know."

"The pack may wish."

"Alpha," the elder said, with a faint smile. "There is a rumor of a man on Stroud land."

The Hall waited.

She turned her head then, slowly, and found me over her shoulder.

"He knows," she said.

I could not breathe.

Somebody at the back began to laugh, and then a hundred wolves were laughing, warm and loud, and I stood there with my ears burning.

She did not look away from me.

The pack let us go at dusk.

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