Chapter 21: The Conclave

The Conclave sat in Bram's own hall, and I sat at the foot of it with my son in my arms.

Six Alphas filled the long table on the dais.

They were older than Cormac, most of them, in dark coats with the cold of the mountains still on them.

An old woman in the middle struck the table with a staff, and the room went quiet.

Four hundred wolves had crowded in, Ironwood on the left and Kettle River on the right.

Cormac sat alone on the Ironwood side, with a bandage under his shirt and nobody near him.

Felicity stood in the open floor before the dais.

She had been given a dry dress, and someone had brushed out her hair.

The moonstone lay at her throat.

She looked small, and frightened, and very young.

She had been all night in a locked room, and she had used every minute of it.

"I ask the Conclave's mercy," she said, in a clear, shaking voice.

"I am an omega.

I have no one.

I came to this council for protection."

"From whom?" the old woman asked.

"From the Alpha of Ironwood's mate."

A murmur went through the hall.

"Morven Colquhoun left her husband's house six months pregnant and went to live under another Alpha's roof.

She has stayed there nearly four months.

A baby born seven weeks early to a woman who had been in a stranger's bed for months is not an heir.

It is a bastard."

Rory stirred against me.

I put my hand on his back.

"The pup is Bram MacNaughton's," Felicity said, and she let her voice break, "and she means to steal Ironwood's name for him.

I only want what's right for Cormac."

"Then why were you at Silver Lake last night," the old woman said, "burning evidence?"

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