They Called My Father a Traitor, So I Learned Every Secret They Buried novel · Chapter 15 of 24
Chapter 15: The Names Sent Into Winter
Hadley laid her folded list across Kestrel's open palm.
'Every name on it was sent out after asking the wrong question,' she told me.
Kestrel did not open the paper. He looked at me instead, waiting for the answer I had not given him yet.
I took the list from his hand and unfolded it beside the ledger.
The names ran down the left page in Hadley's blunt writing. Patrol wolves. Runners. Two kennel boys who had been old enough to carry messages and young enough to be forgotten. Beside each name sat a date, a route, and the last wound recorded before the wolf failed to return.
My ledger held the same dates in its second column.
I had treated those injuries as separate entries because that was how the pack office had presented them. A torn shoulder. A punctured lung. A slash across the back. A disappearance blamed on weather, raiders, or a wolf's own poor judgment.
The dates made a row when placed beside the names.
The row ended at Red Ridge.
Kestrel bent over the pages, his coat brushing my sleeve. He smelled of cold wool, clean skin, and the bitter tincture I had rubbed into his ribs before dawn. My hand remembered the shape of him beneath the bandage. It had no business remembering that while Hadley watched me read a death list.
I moved the ledger half an inch away from him.
Hadley saw. She was kind enough not to smile.
'You can put the blood back in your face later,' she said. 'Right now, look at the report.'
'You are very generous with my schedule.'
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of They Called My Father a Traitor, So I Learned Every Secret They Buried are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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