This Time, I Accept Your Brother's Claim novel · Chapter 7 of 32

Chapter 7: The Council

The Council chamber was the oldest room in the palace.

Round, windowless, lit by iron lamps.

A ring of six carved chairs stood on a low stone dais. The King sat in the tallest.

The five great Alphas sat in the others.

I'd sat in that ring for fifty years as Queen and never once been asked to speak.

Now I stood below it, in the middle of the floor, with Auden beside me.

He'd put on a suit.

It was charcoal gray, and the sleeves were a little short, and he kept pulling at the cuffs.

"Stop that," I murmured.

"It's my brother's. The second one. He's got short arms."

"Then stop drawing attention to them."

His mouth twitched.

My father sat on the bench along the wall with the other Elders.

He'd driven me here himself and hadn't said a word in the car.

The benches were full.

Half the court had come to watch the Maiden get told no.

Piers stood on the other side of the floor in a black suit that fit him perfectly.

He didn't look at me.

He looked at the Alphas.

"Thank you for hearing me," he said. "I'll be brief."

He was always brief in Council.

It was one of the things they loved about him.

"My brother is nineteen. He has never led a hunt. He has never sat in this room. He's an apprentice in a hospital."

He let that sit.

"The King holds the Voice. Every Lycan in this kingdom must obey it. That's not a toy for a boy who drives his motorbike into the lake for fun."

One of the Alphas, a heavy man with a red beard, nodded slowly.

"And the Maiden," Piers said.

Now he looked at me.

"Miss Fairlie lost her mother young. She's been under a great strain. She threw out a bottle of royal medicine in the infirmary yesterday in front of the staff."

A murmur ran along the benches.

"She isn't choosing a King. She's choosing a playmate. I'm asking the Council to stop the Claiming until she's calmer and my brother's grown up."

He stepped back and sat down on the princes' bench beside the twins.

It was very good.

In my first life, that same voice had talked the Council into thirty years of Auden at the border.

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