Shattered Sanctuary: The First Luna's Severance novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Seat

Hamish Wescott had sat at forty council tables in his life, and he had never watched one go quiet.

Rosalind came in wearing the circlet and her own dull green dress, and every wolf in the room stood up before she reached her chair.

She sat down and put both hands flat on the wood.

"First order," she said. "Take the bed out of the Alpha wing."

Edmund blinked.

"The bed?"

"The one in the top room. The frame, the mattress and every sheet. Carry it down to the court and burn it."

Nobody said a word.

"After that," Rosalind said, "open every window up there and leave them open for a week. Then move the clinic's spare beds into the wing. We're short on beds for the winter."

Agnes made a small noise that might have been a laugh.

By noon the whole pack had gathered in the court to watch six wolves haul a huge oak bedstead down the front steps.

Hamish stood at the back with his hands in his pockets.

The smoke went up black and then white.

Rosalind stood at the top of the steps with the quilt over her shoulders and watched every plank take the flame.

She did not look pleased and she did not look sad.

She looked like a woman closing a door.

At the afternoon council she put Edmund at her right hand as Beta, and Agnes at her left as the pack's voice.

Then she looked down the table.

"Ironridge sits with us," she said. "The pact is open. I want Hamish Wescott at this table whenever there's a border to talk about."

Edmund cleared his throat.

"It's irregular to seat a neighboring Alpha."

"So was most of last month."

Hamish took the empty chair, and when he met her eyes he found that she wasn't smiling.

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