The Alpha Who Let His Luna Die novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Kneeling at the Border

They knelt along their own bank of the creek in the gray light, three hundred wolves in rows.

Mud soaked their knees.

None of them looked up when Kellan and I came down through the white trees.

I walked to the water's edge with his hand in mine, and I let my collar fall open.

The new mark showed on the right side of my neck, raw and red.

A murmur went down the line, and it was not a happy one or an angry one.

It was the sound of people reading a fact.

The gaunt elder in the gray shawl rose from her knees.

She crossed the creek on the stones, wet to the shin, and stopped in front of me.

"Luna," she said.

"I'm not your luna."

"You are the only one we ever had who earned it." Her chin shook. "We stood in a ring and watched you fall. I was in that ring, child. I have not slept since."

"You told yourselves it wasn't your business."

"We told ourselves he was Alpha."

The wind moved the pines.

"Come home," she said. "Be our luna, and rule us, and we will do as you say."

Behind her, the whole line of wolves bent lower.

I looked down that row of faces.

The baker's wife.

The old man from the porch.

The boy whose arm I'd set, now a head taller and crying openly.

I had loved every one of them.

"No," I said.

The elder flinched.

"I'm not going to be the woman you hide behind," I said. "You knelt to me because it's easy. It's easier than standing up to him was."

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