The Luna He Lost to the Alpha King novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Crown Luna

Cora's POV

I reached him first, and I put both hands on his bleeding arm, and I said, "Sit down before you fall."

"I'm not going to fall."

"You're swaying, Halvorsen."

"Only a little," he said, and then he sat in the snow, and Hazel sat down beside him as if that had been her plan.

The Crown healer wrapped his ribs by the ring, with half the north watching.

Torin didn't take his eyes off me the entire time.

That evening, the Council met in the great hall at Highcrest.

Every Alpha was there, and every elder, and the old Alpha of Pinecrest sat in the second row with his hands folded.

Torin stood at the foot of the dais, bandaged under a clean shirt, because he refused to sit.

"The challenge is answered," said the old Alpha of the eastern packs. "The Crown holds. But the clause stands until the solstice, and the Council would hear whether the King has a Luna."

The whole hall turned.

Nobody had told me what to say.

I had decided I wouldn't write it down.

I walked to the center of the floor and stood where I had stood on the night before the Moot.

"My name is Cora Mercer," I said. "Eleven years ago I was made the Luna of a pack, and I was happy about it, and I did the job."

"Some of you sat at my table for eleven years and saw it. Not one of you said a word, and I'm not asking you to now."

A few Alphas looked at their boots.

"A month ago I refused the bond in front of two hundred people, and I wasn't asking anyone's permission. I'm not asking it now."

I turned to Torin.

"This man hid a file from me for seven years, and I told him what I thought about it. He didn't argue. He told me everything, and then he stood in the snow today and bled and wouldn't kill a man to keep his chair."

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