After Rebirth, I Broke Our Bond and My Alpha Regretted It novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Free to Go

Kestrel's POV

The elders asked for me at noon, and I walked to the Standing Stone in daylight for the first time since the cup.

The ring looked smaller without torches.

The silver bowl was gone from the stone, and the grass inside the circle was trampled flat.

The oldest elder held a worn book in both hands.

"There's an old reading of the choosing law," he said. "Nobody has used it in forty years, and none of us liked to be the one to find it."

"Read it."

"The binding to the land holds until the next autumn cup, or until the woman it binds says before the pack that it is done. Her word is enough. Nobody else's."

He looked up.

"If you say so, Beta, the law lapses. You may go where you like, and the cord is no longer a mate-cord. It stops carrying."

"Stops carrying what?"

"Whatever one of you feels for the other."

I looked around the ring.

Joss leaned on a standing stone with his arms folded.

Ida stood by my father, who had his coat buttoned right for once.

And at the back, past the last stone, outside the ten paces, stood Caleb Rooke in a pair of brown wool gloves.

He did not come closer.

I had not felt him since I walked into the ring, and I knew that was because he had stayed out of range on purpose.

I looked at him for a long moment.

Then I said, loud enough for the stones, "The law is done. I'm free of it."

Something went out of my ribs.

It was small, and it left a silence where the low steady hum of him had been.

I put my hand to my chest.

For twelve days I had known what he felt before he opened his mouth.

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