A Hatred Most Pure novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Ansel's POV

Ansel's POV

The elder kept her rooms at the top of the north tower.

The stair was long, and I climbed it slowly, because I did not want to arrive.

She sat in front of her cold hearth with her staff across her knees.

Her white braids were loose for sleeping.

"You've come to ask me what the Moot can do," she said.

"Yes."

"Sit."

I stayed on my feet.

"The charge is Cora's," the elder said. "The seat is yours.

"Dietrich has tied them together, because he is not a stupid man."

"Say it plain."

"If the Moot hangs her, you die in the same hour.

"Dunmarrow has no Alpha, and Saltmarsh claims it as the nearest pack with a living one."

"And if I tell the holds why?"

She was quiet.

"Then no one will hang her," she said. "No hold will kill an Alpha by killing his first-face. She'll live."

"Good."

"But the charge would still stand. A woman guilty of that charge is an enemy of the holds."

She looked at me.

"The law says no Alpha bound to an enemy of the holds may sit. You would be stripped that same morning."

"And Dietrich walks into Dunmarrow with a paper and the Moot's seal."

I looked at the dead fire.

I had known it. I had known it since the cut opened on my arm in front of two hundred people.

"So she lives or I keep the seat," I said. "Not both."

"Unless the Moot believes her. Unless Pia Mayhew stands up, which she won't."

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