My Mate and Family's Choice novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Hearing

Tegan's POV

The Council hall was a long timber barn at the crossroads, with benches for three hundred and a fire at each end.

All three hundred were there.

I sat in the front row with my mother on one side and Junie on the other, and I did not look at either of them.

Rodrick stood in the dock in a clean shirt, with his hands loose at his sides and no lawyer.

Dalton sat across the aisle with his mother, in the black coat, relaxed as a man at a picnic.

He caught my eye and raised two fingers to his chest.

My wolf lifted her lip, and I looked away.

"The complaint is kidnap," the chair said. "The accused carried a woman unconscious to his lodge and barred the door. MacAlister, do you answer?"

"I do not dispute the carrying," Rodrick said.

A murmur ran around the benches.

I stood up.

"Chair, I'm the woman. May I speak?"

The chair looked at me with her locked-gate face.

"The complainant is Mrs. Henshaw," she said. "But the Council will hear the girl."

I walked into the floor.

I told it plainly.

I told it from the milk to the key, in fewer words than it had cost me.

Then I told them what I had told nobody yet: that I could have left any morning, and I had stayed.

"I was taken unconscious from my own wedding," I said. "I won't deny it. The one who took me was my mother, and the one who signed me over was my father."

"And the accused?"

"He has never asked me for one thing I didn't offer first." I looked at Rodrick. "Not once."

"Objection," Dalton's mother said, rising. "The girl is under the MacAlister's influence."

"The MacAlister Alpha," I said, "is the first honest influence I've had in four years."

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