Chapter 17: The Pouch

Trudy had the doctor on a cot in the infirmary tent when we got there.

His left eye was swollen shut, and a split in his lip showed black stitches.

She looked up at Rowan and said, "Two ribs, a broken wrist, and he'll live."

"Who did it?" Rowan said.

"Ask him. He's been asking for her."

The doctor turned his good eye to me.

"Miss Hoglund," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Don't."

"I mean for all of it."

I sat on the stool by his cot, and he talked.

He talked for an hour, and a gray-braided Alpha stood at the tent pole the whole time with a notebook open on her arm.

The bitter tea had been Ruby's.

Ruby had come to him in the first week with a small jar and a printed schedule.

"She brought the herb from her father's own cabinet," the doctor said. "It was marked with the Alliance pharmacy seal."

"She taught me the form of the logs. What to write, how to word it, what the girl must sign."

He looked at his bandaged hand.

"Ruby changed the dose every spring and told me what to put on the sheets."

"I wrote what she said, because I was in debt to her father."

The gray-braided Alpha stopped writing.

"And tonight?"

"Four men in Alliance gray." His voice dropped.

"The guards at my flap walked off when they came."

"One of the four said I had told the Court too much."

Nobody spoke.

Rowan's hands had closed to fists at his sides.

"Will you swear to it?" the gray-braided Alpha said. "In front of the Court, in daylight?"

Keep reading free with an account. Start After My Alpha Drugged Me for Ten Years from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.