Chapter 8: Eamon's POV: The Empty Chair

Eamon's POV

At nine in the morning I stood at the head of the long table in the war room.

I told eleven elders there would be no Luna.

Lydia sat at the foot in her white dress, which she had not taken off.

Nobody had slept.

The crown sat in its velvet box in front of me, and I had not touched it since the night before.

"The ceremony is void," I said. "The coronation is canceled."

"No one sits in the Luna's chair until I say so."

The eldest of the elders, a thin woman who had served my father, folded her hands.

"Alpha, the northern packs have watched for six years to see where your weakness is."

"If the Luna's chair stays empty, they will know."

"Then let them know."

"Eamon," Lydia said.

Lydia stood. Her voice shook, but it carried.

"Every wolf in this room knows what that woman gave up to protect me."

"Don't make her death mean nothing."

"Her name was Hazel," I said.

She stopped.

"She had a name. She had a lab with forty people in it."

"Every one of them watched her cuffs burn, and I stood there and let it happen."

The room was quiet.

I turned to the head of my guard, a square man who had stood behind me for twelve years.

"The glass on the stage. Who handled it?"

"The vault guards brought it up on a tray, sir. Two of them."

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