Chapter 22: Judgment

Stevie's POV

The great hall of the pack house held three hundred people at noon.

They filled the long tables, the gallery and the stairs.

The ones without a seat stood along the walls with their phones in their hands.

Roxy was upstairs asleep in the blue room, pink-cheeked and snoring.

The antidote had worked within an hour.

I had checked her pulse four times before I came down.

At the head of the hall stood a long oak table.

The pack council sat at it, nine people in dark clothes, with Sonja in the center chair.

She wore her gray wool coat and a pearl pin, and her hands were folded on the wood.

She did not look afraid.

I walked to the end of the table with my laptop under my arm.

I set it down in front of the big screen on the far wall.

Tiernan stood to my right and Dane to my left.

Roth stood in the shadow of the doorway with the curtains drawn.

He had asked to be there, and I had said yes.

"I'm Stevie Larkin," I said.

My voice carried.

"Nineteen years ago I was Stephanie Ashworth, and I was three."

"I'm here to show you what was done in this pack's name. Then I'm going to ask you to decide."

Nobody spoke.

I opened the laptop.

"Sonja Kincaid keeps her files on a private server in her study."

"It took me two days to get in. I'm sorry it wasn't longer."

A ripple of uneasy laughter.

The screen on the wall lit up.

The first image was a scan of a typed letter on pack letterhead, dated nineteen years ago.

It was addressed to the council.

It named the Ashworth pack, the valley, the house and the night.

It was signed in Sonja's hand.

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