Chapter 12: What the Table Heard

"A forgery," Godfrey said.

It was the first thing he'd said in a full minute, and his voice was thin.

"Gordon Danforth was a bitter man who wrote his own absolution and slipped it into a box."

"Then it won't matter if I look at the signature," the Council's witness said.

She rose and walked the length of the table, and she picked the sheet up by its corners.

She held it under the candles.

"I have seen S. Hargrove's hand on thirty years of Council forms," she said.

"The tail on the S. The way the H leans. The blue ink is the pack's own, the same ink the Alpha signs the border treaties with."

"That proves nothing."

"It proves I'll be sending this to the Council tonight," she said.

She slid the sheet into the back of her book.

Godfrey's cane came up.

It was one sharp movement, and the silver wolf's head caught the light.

"Give me that."

Ronan stepped between them.

He didn't raise his hands or his voice.

"Put it down, Grandfather."

"That is a family document."

"It's a Council document now."

The old man's eyes went across the table to the elders he had been kind to for forty years.

Not one of them met his gaze.

"I did it for this pack," Godfrey said, and his voice cracked.

"You were children. You didn't see what was coming over that ridge."

"Then tell us," Ronan said.

"I won't be questioned at my own table."

"Then you'll be questioned at the Council's."

The witness closed her book with both hands.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Unbonding the Ruthless Alpha from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.