Chapter 19: The Chain Breaks

Alasdair's POV

I had agreed to the chain because the law demanded it.

I had never agreed to watch them carry her out.

Two Cold Ridge wolves had her under the arms, with her head hanging and her feet dragging on the boards.

Her eyes were half open, and they were silver.

She was looking at me.

"Odette," I said.

She did not answer.

I knew the smell in the room then, green and bitter, in her breath and in the empty glass on the tray.

My wolf stopped asking me for anything.

He took the iron in both our hands.

The ring was set in a stone wall that had stood for two hundred years, and the cuffs were forged to hold an Alpha.

I pulled once.

Mortar cracked, and dust sifted down onto my shoulders.

"Alasdair!" Padraig shouted. "Wait for me!"

I pulled again, and I thought of nine years of her chair empty in the next room.

The ring tore out of the wall with a block of stone attached.

It hit the floor with a boom that rang the whole length of the hall.

Every Cold Ridge warrior turned.

"Restrain him," the old man said, rising.

Four of them came at me.

I did not count them.

I swung the block on its chain and it took two off their feet.

The third got a hand on my shoulder, and I put my elbow through his jaw.

The fourth I threw through a bench.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Signed My Resignation Without Reading It, Now His Wolf Hunts Me from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.