Chapter 13: His Father's Notebook

Alasdair's POV

I had seen Odette angry, tired and bleeding from a broken wrist.

I had never seen her afraid.

It took me a moment to understand the photograph in Imogen's hand.

The woman in it had Odette's mouth, and she laughed with her chin up, exactly as Odette did.

"Who is that?" I said.

"Ask her," Imogen said.

"I'm asking you."

She slipped the phone back into her coat pocket and smiled at me, patient and sorry.

"Sweetheart, I didn't want to do it like this. That is Odette's mother, the last Ashgrove Alpha. She wore that locket the day she died."

The word Ashgrove went through me, and my wolf came up hard.

Odette was standing now, with my jacket still around her shoulders.

"Get out," she said.

"The four packs have a law about her kind," Imogen went on, gently, to me.

"An Alpha-born without a pack has to stand before a Moot."

"You know I have to call one."

"You'd be breaking nothing," I said. "You don't sit on the Moot."

"My father does."

Her smile never moved.

"I'll let you two talk," she said. "Breakfast is in the bag. Do eat, Odette. You look pale."

She walked out of the vault without hurrying.

I heard her heels on the concrete, going away.

Odette sat down hard on the floor.

"Did you know?" she whispered.

"No."

"She has my mother's locket."

"I know. I'll get it back."

"Alasdair, I need to go home. I need to see my grandmother."

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