He Destroyed My Youth, Killed My Child, Now He Begs, But I Am Gone Forever novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: What Was in the Box

Hamish's POV

At three in the morning I woke the old gravedigger and told him to bring two shovels.

He didn't ask why.

He was seventy-one and had buried my father, and he knew my face.

"You're sure, Alpha?"

"No," I said. "Bring them anyway."

We walked up to the cedars in the dark with a lantern.

The stone was cold under my hand.

I had touched it every March for five years, and I had never once dug.

I told myself it was respect.

Tonight I knew it was fear.

Yvaine's hand had lain flat on this stone that afternoon, and she had said it twice.

Nobody let me see anything.

I had stood ten feet away and heard it, and the sentence would not leave my head.

I started the dig myself.

The soil was wet and heavy, and it was a small grave, so it didn't take long.

The gravedigger leaned on his spade and watched me with his lined face turned half away.

"I filled this in myself," he said. "Your mother stood right where you're standing."

"Did you see it?"

"See what?"

"What you put in the ground."

"The box was sealed." His voice was very quiet. "She said you couldn't bear to look. And the healer was already gone, so there was nobody to say otherwise."

My shovel hit wood.

It was a small box, about the size of a bread loaf, with the lid nailed down.

It was lighter than it should have been.

I lifted it out of the earth, and my hands were shaking so badly that the gravedigger stepped forward to hold the lantern.

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