The Moon She Waited Under novel · Chapter 20 of 24
Chapter 20: The Cliffs
Lucan's POV
On the day of the ninth moon I was sitting on the cliff path beside the old watchtower, and I couldn't feel my left hand.
I had been up there twenty-eight days.
The wolf in me had stopped answering on the twentieth, and since then I'd had only my own two legs, a blanket, and what Kari sent up the path in a basket with a boy who wouldn't look at me.
I was a man and nothing more.
That was how I knew it was close.
I heard her before I saw her.
Her boots were quick and steady on the scree, and she didn't slow when the path got steep.
She came around the corner of the tower with her braid over her shoulder and a cloth bag in one hand, and the Alpha's bronze ring swinging from a cord in the other.
"You left this," Dessa said.
"I know."
"It's yours."
"It isn't mine anymore." I stayed where I was. "I'm not fit for it. Cold Ridge needs an Alpha who can call a wolf."
"Then you're out of luck. The council says there isn't one."
"There's you."
She stopped.
"There's a wolf in this valley who put Haskell on his knees without lifting a paw," I said. "She doesn't need my chair. She can take it. I'd rather it was her than anyone."
"Lucan."
"I mean it."
She looked at the ring in her hand.
Then she looked at me, and her mouth did something I hadn't seen it do in a year.
It shook.
"I came to say you're a coward," she said.
"I know."
"No. Listen." She dropped the bag between us. "I came up here to say you're a coward who decided what I could bear and walked off and left me to bear it. And I thought I'd feel better saying it."
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