Chapter 19: No Deal

I didn't walk with him.

"Say it here," I said, in the aisle, loud enough for the benches. "Whatever it is, the pack can hear."

The uncle stopped.

For a second his face did a small thing, a flicker of calculation, and then he smiled and turned to the Council.

"Gladly," he said. "I've been the Council's voice for twenty years. I'd like to put a settlement on the table."

"Go on," said the old elder.

"Bram steps down as Alpha today. He has confessed to a death, and the pack can't keep him."

Bram, at the front, did not argue.

"I will hold the seat as acting Alpha until the girl is eighteen," the uncle said. "That's what the law allows when an heir is a child."

Murmurs rose behind me.

"In return," he said, "Mrs. Brandvold and the child receive a house on Ironwood land, a pension for life, and the protection of this pack."

He looked at me.

"No more hearings, no more filings. She can raise her daughter in peace."

It was a good offer.

Half the benches thought so, I could hear it.

A house, a pension, and no fight.

I looked at the table where I'd signed six years of flour orders.

I looked at the old widow near the wall, who had finally learned whose order killed her husband.

"What happens to the seat when she's eighteen?" I said.

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