"I don't accept you" — he shouted it in front of everyone novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Scar

I told him about the vial in the dark.

We were in his room with the lamp off and the window open on the river.

I had the glass in my fist and the cork stained black.

"The Beta," Ezra said.

"His wife says so."

"Will she say it before the Court?"

"I don't know. She was afraid to tell me in a parking lot."

He took the vial from my hand and held it up to the moon.

"Then we keep it close," he said. "And we let him speak first. He offered you a house to bury this. Let him say all of it out loud."

"You want him to walk into it."

"I want him to be standing on the dais when the floor goes."

I laughed.

It sounded tired, and I leaned on him, and his arm came around my back.

It was the first time all week that I had let myself be held without something else on fire.

"Come here," he said.

I came.

I climbed onto his lap on the edge of the bed with my knees on either side of his hips, and put my hands on his shoulders.

His shirt was already open.

The scar lay pale under his ribs, a long ridge slanting from his side toward his hip.

I traced it with one finger.

He let me.

"You said later," I said.

"Yes."

"It's later."

He was quiet.

Then he said, "This is what it cost the last time I stepped into another wolf's rejection."

My finger stopped.

"The Court fined Black Fork a season's harvest for it. I swore I would never break that law again. So when your wind came across the lot, and a boy was screaming at you, I put my hand on the door and I counted."

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