I Will Never Be Yours novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: One Moment Longer

The Council hall at the new moon was lit by torches and nothing else.

Two packs filled it, grey on the west side and black and silver on the east, with the northern green shoved in at the back.

The Stonegate Alpha stood among them with his arms folded.

He had come on his own feet and brought his own pennant, and he nodded to me once when I walked in.

The white-bearded elder stood in front of the dais in chains.

He had lost weight in the cells.

He did not meet my eyes.

Autumn sat in the second row with the healer's satchel on her lap, grinning.

I walked up the center aisle with Caspian a half step behind me, and nobody spoke.

The bent old woman waited on the dais with her cane.

"Sorcha MacQuarrie," she said. "Alpha of Ironcrest by the ring, and Luna of the Crown by the rite. The law gives you one."

"I know."

"Which seat?"

"First," I said, "I'll deal with him."

I turned to the elder.

He lifted his head, and I looked at his stag ring finger, bare and red.

"You sold my father for a pass," I said. "You paid for my poison. You gave my people ale that made them vomit in a ditch."

"I did not."

"The Stonegate Alpha says you did. The guard who carried your note says you did."

He looked at the northern Alpha, who looked back and said nothing.

"Ironcrest has a sentence for a man who cheated its Alpha," I said. "He cuts stone."

A murmur went round the hall.

"For how long?"

"Until the quarry road is rebuilt and the pass is open and every house in the valley has its roof."

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