Chapter 16: Joel's Room

Ronan's POV

I went to my grandfather's lodge alone, at first light, on the morning of the tribunal.

Ivy wanted to come, and so did Hazel.

I asked Ivy to stay with the pack at the hall and said I would bring Mirelle back.

She looked at me for a long moment.

"Bring all of them back," she said. "Alive. I want to see his face when the Alphas read it."

She didn't say it as an order, and I took it as one anyway.

Four of Godfrey's guard stood on the lodge porch.

They were big men, and I had trained two of them myself.

"Alpha," one said, and none of them moved.

"I'm going in," I said. "You can step aside, or you can explain to three Alphas why you stood in front of me."

I didn't use the command voice.

I had promised Ivy I wouldn't use it on her, and I found I didn't want it in my mouth for anyone.

They stepped aside anyway.

Mirelle sat in the kitchen with her bag on her knee and a mug she hadn't touched.

A guard stood in the doorway.

She looked up when I came in, and the relief on her face made me sick.

"Ronan," she said. "He said if I testified, he'd tell the pack I'd lied about every man in Seattle."

"He said a lot of things."

I turned to the guard.

"Take her to Hazel's truck. Nobody touches her on the way."

He took her by the elbow, gently now, and out the back door.

I climbed the stairs.

My grandfather was in Joel's room.

He had kept it exactly as it was for six years, with the bed made and the gray jacket over the chair.

He sat on the edge of the mattress with both hands on the silver wolf's head of his cane.

"I wondered when you'd come up," he said.

"You called me boy in the archive."

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