Breed Me, Daddy Alpha novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Vote

The Pinegate Grange hall holds two hundred people, and on Friday night it held two hundred and forty.

They stood along the walls and sat on the stage edge and filled every folding chair.

Children were not allowed, so the children were outside, pressed to the open windows.

I sat in the second row between my mother and a pot of Mabel's tea.

Kellan sat at the long table at the front with the council elders, his hands flat on the wood.

He looked better than he had in days.

I knew why.

I'd spent the afternoon with my palm on his chest while he lay on the MacAskill couch with a wet cloth over his eyes, bleeding the heat out of him an hour at a time.

It wasn't a cure.

It was a bandage, and everyone in the room could see that if they looked closely.

Ridley stood at the podium.

He had a clean white shirt on and a stack of papers, and he spoke in the soft, reasonable voice of a man delivering a eulogy.

"Fourteen elders have signed," he said. "I take no pleasure in this."

"Then sit down," someone called.

A ripple of laughter, and Ridley smiled with it.

"This isn't personal. Alpha MacAskill has served this pack for twenty years. But a leader has a duty to be strong. And on Monday, in front of this pack, he fell in the mill yard from a sickness he hid for four days. A sickness he caught because he refused a bond."

A murmur rolled through the room.

"He refused a bond with a girl in heat. A girl his daughter's age. A girl who, by the testimony of this hall, did not kneel to the Alpha's own command."

I felt two hundred and forty heads turn.

"I'm not here to judge her," Ridley said smoothly. "I'm here to ask a simple question. Can a man in that condition be trusted with the safety of this pack? His own aunt says the fever kills in ten."

"Ten days, if nobody does anything about it," Mabel called from the front row. "And I'd like to be quoted correctly."

More laughter.

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