The Apex They Could Never Own: A Werewolf Romance of Power, Possession, and Fate novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Answering

"There's a message," Hattie's mother said, and her voice shook for the first time since I'd known her.

She held out her phone with the braid still in the other hand.

The text came from a number I didn't know.

Under it was a photo of Hattie in a plain chair, with a split lip, glaring at the camera.

She was alive, and she was furious, and that was the only good thing in the picture.

"Bring the Apex to the east gate by dawn tomorrow," I read aloud. "She wears the collar. Then the girl goes home. Yours, Lucas."

"Yours," Ansel said behind me, flatly.

"He signs it yours," I said. "He thinks I'm already his."

Hattie's mother turned the braid over in her fist.

"What do we do?" she said.

I had never been asked that by a grown woman with a shotgun.

I looked at the east, where the sun was coming up over Highgate's grey roof, and I knew what I wasn't going to do.

"I'm not wearing it," I said.

"Dara," said Ansel.

"I'm not wearing it, and I'm not leaving Hattie there either. So he doesn't get to pick the room."

"What does that mean?" her mother asked.

"It means I call the Answering."

Nobody on the ridge moved.

It's one of those old laws every wolf kid learns and nobody has ever used.

"Tell them what you know of it," Ansel said quietly.

"Any black cuff can blow an Apex horn," I said. "The Council has three sunrises to gather. The Speaker has to stand in front of everyone and answer any question the Apex asks. He can't refuse to open a room or a record in Highgate."

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