Chapter 17: The Seer

The council sat in full for the first time on the eighth day.

Twelve seats stood around the long table in the Keep's council room, and eleven were filled.

The Crown held two of them, and Elias took one.

The other one was for me.

I sat down in it with my back straight and the healer's green ledger in front of me, and I did not look at the Redmoon end of the table.

Alpha Prentiss looked at me anyway.

He wore a grey suit and an easy expression.

Brant sat behind his shoulder.

Kenneth Garrow sat across from me.

He had come in alone, and he took the chair at the end without being offered it.

"Before we hear the petition," said the oldest elder, tapping his cane, "this council will hear the Crown's seer."

A steward opened the side door.

The seer was a small old woman in grey wool who walked with a hand on the steward's arm.

She had pale, clouded eyes, and she turned her face to the table.

She stopped when she reached my father's end.

"Kenneth Garrow," she said. "You've grown thin."

My father did not answer.

"Tell the council what you told the Garrow Alpha twenty-four years ago," Elias said.

"I gave all five Alphas the same instruction." Her voice was dry and unhurried.

"Any girl born in their packs that year was to be brought to the Crown at eighteen, so that she could choose.

Four of them did what I asked."

"And the fifth?"

"Garrow said over his dead body."

A sound went around the table.

The seer turned her head toward me.

"You're the girl," she said.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Rejected Me? I Married the Alpha King! from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.