"I don't accept you" — he shouted it in front of everyone novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Beta's Bottle

The Moon Court sat at first light, and the Beta had dressed for it.

He wore a black suit and a gold pin on his collar, and he stood on the dais where my father used to stand, with his hands folded in front of him.

The Seer sat on her stool to his right.

Twenty elders filled the benches, and behind them stood the packs.

Black Fork had come in force.

Ezra stood at the back with his arms folded, and Clover stood next to me, and the vial sat in my coat pocket with my fingers around it.

"Let the record show," the Beta said, "that this Court was called by lawful right."

"It was," the Seer said dryly. "Go on."

"Imogen Harwick was fated to my son, a Redwood wolf. She cast that bond out before the whole school. She did it in anger, and she did it in front of an Alpha of a rival pack, who then took her into his own house the same night."

He turned to the benches.

"Within a week my son lay dying, and the girl and her Alpha tell us it was poison. A convenient story. A story that leaves Black Fork with a Redwood daughter, and Redwood without an Alpha, and with a strip of river land that Ezra Duncannon has already signed over to a pack in disarray."

The elders murmured.

Some of them were nodding.

I felt my pulse in my teeth.

"I say this is a seizure," the Beta said. "A rival Alpha has taken a Redwood wolf by a trick of scent. I call for the girl to be returned to her own hearth, for the strip to be struck from the record, and for the seat of Redwood to pass to its senior wolf until this is made right."

"The girl owns her own hearth," the Seer said. "I have read the law twice."

"Then she should answer for the bond she broke."

"I have," I said.

My voice rang off the stone.

"I answered in the lot. I answered at the gate. I answered when Celia held a flask to his mouth. Every wolf in this room has watched me answer."

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