Chapter 12: Blood

"Get up," I said to the road. "All of you."

They rose, slowly, ten men with gravel on their knees and their eyes lowered.

By the time I turned around, Dewitt Faulk's sedan was gone.

Nobody had seen him leave.

The gray-hatted Alpha cleared his throat.

"The Moot will sit at nine tomorrow," he said, without lifting his eyes. "We'll hear the Ridge's case, Alpha."

He wasn't talking to Ronan.

I followed Joanne to the hospital and sat with her until a nurse threw me out.

Ronan waited in the farm truck the entire time.

He didn't speak on the drive to the Hall, and neither did I.

In the yard, the porch light was on, and Abel stood on the steps wringing a dish towel.

"Go inside," Ronan told him. "All of you."

The kitchen emptied at once.

I climbed the stairs in front of him and went into the study.

It was the one room where I'd already been alone with the truth.

He stopped in the doorway.

"You knew," I said. "On the highway. Not that I was bait. That something would happen when I drank."

"I didn't know."

"Tell me anyway."

He leaned his forehead against the door frame and closed his eyes.

"The night of the crash, you were dying," he said.

"I know."

"Your ribs had gone into your lung. I could hear it. There wasn't an ambulance in time."

"And?"

"An Alpha's blood heals a human. It's in every pack's oldest songs."

"But?"

"It takes a lot, and it takes the part that makes him an Alpha."

"Takes it."

"Passes it. Into whoever drinks."

His eyes opened.

"I had nothing left to spare, Mara. I gave you the last of it, everything in my wrist."

"So that's why you couldn't stand."

"Yes."

"And that's why they kneel."

"It's yours," he said. "The rank, the command, the whole voice."

"And the nine men?"

"They aren't kneeling to me. They're kneeling to the woman who carries the Alpha of the Ridge."

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