The End of Us novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: Two Seats
Isla's POV
The Moon Council sat in the Harlow Falls grange hall, under a ceiling of old beams, with two hundred wolves on the benches.
I walked in alone.
Keith had said he would come, and he did, but he stayed at the back wall with his arms folded.
I had asked him to.
I wanted nobody to say, afterward, that a man had won it for me.
The rival Alpha sat on the front bench, a big, silver-haired man with a heavy jaw, and a dozen of his pack behind him.
He had held the north ridge for thirty years.
He stood when the white-haired elder called the session, and he did not look at me.
"Honored Council," he said. "I am not here to insult the girl."
"I'm twenty-six," I said.
A few of the benches laughed.
"I am here to uphold the law," he went on, a little louder. "The Council's charter allows each wolf one seat. She holds the Dunstan Alpha's chair. And she claims the Sheridan chair on this Council, which has stood empty for seventeen years. That is two."
"It is," said the elder. "Alpha Sheridan?"
"I'll answer him in a moment," I said. "Let him finish."
He smiled thinly.
"A young woman, unmated, with a wolf that is days old and untested, holds two chairs and every river acre between them. If the Council allows it, no pack on this water is safe. I ask that she choose one. And I ask that the other pass to a steady hand."
"Yours," I said.
"The Council will decide who."
"Of course."
The room rustled.
I put the iron ring on the table in front of me, where everybody could see it.
"May I speak?" I asked the elder.
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