Chapter 21: On My Terms

"No," I said.

A murmur rose from the hall, and the council woman's mouth twitched.

"I haven't asked you anything yet," she said.

"Whatever it is, no. I've sat in enough chairs that weren't mine."

"It is a seat."

"It's a chair with Corbin's name on it."

I looked down the hall at two hundred faces. They were tired, and frightened, and watching me.

I thought of the room I'd lived in, and the pack that called me "the north wing" because nobody would say my name.

"Here is what I know," I said. "I know how to set a bone and how to sit with a dying woman."

"I know nothing about running a pack."

"Then you'll learn," the cook said, from the right wall.

Some of the wolves laughed.

"I will," I said. "But not on your old terms. If I hold this seat, I hold it on mine."

"Name them, Luna," the council woman said.

I took a breath.

"First, nobody in this house goes unnamed. If I pass you in the corridor, I say your name."

"And I'm not 'the north wing' anymore. I'm Rhiannon Roarke."

A woman near the front put her hand over her mouth.

"Second, the omegas sit at the council table. The kitchen sits. The night patrol sits."

"If it's decided in this house, the people who live in it are in the room."

"That's never been done," the grey-bearded man muttered.

"Then it's about time."

"Third, the seat is voted every spring. Not once, and not for life."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Alpha Panicked When I Accepted His Rejection from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.