Sold to the Alpha novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Wheat-Ear

"Say it plainly," I told Hetta.

My voice sounded far away.

She stood beside me in the dust with her hands knotted in her apron.

"She was my friend," said Hetta.

"She was head cook in this house for twelve years.

"She had a gap in her teeth just like yours, and she held a ladle like a sword.

"I knew you the first day you walked in here, girl, and I told myself I was seeing things."

"My mother died of a winter fever."

"Is that what your father told you?"

I opened my mouth.

I shut it.

"Eleven years ago," said Hetta, "the old Alpha died at his own table of wolfsbane in his wine.

"The cook who poured it was hanged in the yard the next morning, on a paper she signed.

"Her name was never spoken in this Hold again."

I looked at the wheat-ear in the beam.

I thought of my father, lying in a snowed-in cart that winter, saying Your mother is gone, love, she's gone.

He had never said how.

"She didn't do it," said Hetta.

"I never believed it.

"I've never said so aloud, because I was afraid.

"I'm saying it now."

"Does he know?" I said.

"The Alpha?"

"Does he know whose daughter I am?"

Hetta's eyes slid to the floor.

I did not wait for the answer.

I took the stairs of the Wolf Tower two at a time.

The guards at the top saw my face and stood aside.

I kicked the door open, hard enough to bang it against the wall.

Ketil was at the table with a map and a candle.

He looked up, and his face went still as ash.

"You knew," I said.

He rose slowly.

"Say it."

"I knew from the first breath, in Dunmere," said Ketil.

"You have her face.

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