He Stole My Title, So I Took His True Heir novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Staff Does Not Light

The moon platform was lit with torches, and the pack stood on the hill below it in rows.

Three hundred people, wolves and their families, coats buttoned to the chin.

I walked up the stone steps with Mabel in my arms and my braid down my back.

Nobody led me.

Behind me came Greta, with her son and the grey blanket, and Cade a step to my left.

A murmur went through the crowd.

Bram stood beside the founder's ebony staff at the center of the dais.

He had lost weight in a month.

When he saw me he opened his mouth, and when he saw Greta behind me he shut it again.

"You were gone," he said to her.

"I'm here now," Greta said.

The oldest elder, a stooped man with a white beard, stood at the staff's other side.

He lifted it out of its iron cradle with both hands.

"By the law of Ironwood," he said, "the territory's blessing is given by the staff, in front of the pack. Whichever child it does not light is no heir."

Bram's uncle stepped up from the second row.

"The boy first," he said, "as the elder child."

"Age isn't what the staff reads," I said.

"The boy first."

The elder turned and held the staff over Greta's son.

Greta lifted the baby high, with both arms shaking.

The ebony stayed black.

The torches popped, and the pack leaned in.

"Again," the uncle said.

The elder held the staff over the boy a second time, and a third.

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