Chapter 20: The Ring and the Cake

The ring lay on the Council table, a plain band of dark iron on the grain of the wood.

I had known it all my life.

It had been on my father's right hand at every supper, every funeral, every time he lifted me off a fence.

I stood over it in Ansel's coat and a pair of borrowed Warden boots.

The hall had not emptied.

The Silver Creek delegation sat in their tiers, three hundred of them, with the elder at the front.

They were waiting to see what the Alpha's daughter would do.

"I resign the Alpha's seat of Silver Creek," my father said, from the floor of the ring.

His voice carried to the back row.

"I lied to this Council. I sold my daughter for a river, and I let a boy break her in front of you. I have no right to the ring."

Nobody spoke.

The elder, a white-haired woman who had taught me to read, got to her feet slowly.

"The pack has not voted," she said.

"There is nothing to vote on."

"There is," she said. "Silver Creek, hands. Who keeps Gregory Ludlow?"

Not one hand went up.

I heard my brothers draw breath behind him.

My father bowed his head.

He had expected it, and it still reached him.

"Then the ring goes to his daughter," the elder said. "She was the one wronged. If she'll take it."

I looked at the iron band.

It would have been so easy.

I could be Alpha of Silver Creek, and my father would stand behind me with his hands empty for the rest of his life.

"No," I said.

A murmur ran up the tiers.

"I answer to the Crown and to no pack," I said. "I took that oath on purpose, and I'm keeping it."

I picked the ring up and turned it over.

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