My Pack Cut Me Off, So I Reported to the Lycan King novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Gregory Kneels

I found my father on the fourth floor, alone on the training mats.

He had asked to see me, and I had said tomorrow, and it was tomorrow.

Gregory Ludlow was on his knees in the middle of the blue floor.

I had never seen him kneel to anything, not the Moon Goddess and not the King.

"Don't," I said from the door. "I won't have it for show."

"There's no one here to show," he said.

"Then why are you down there?"

"Because I want to say it from here."

I came in and stopped well out of reach.

He kept his eyes on the mat.

"We lost the wells in the drought the summer you turned sixteen," he said. "Half the pack was hauling water from the river in buckets. Blood Ridge held the upper bank and the dam, and they would sell us the bank for one thing."

"Me."

"You. I told myself you'd be a Luna and you'd be happy. I told myself it was a good match, and I signed on your birthday because I didn't have the nerve to do it any other day."

"You let Mom bake the cake."

"I let her. I didn't tell you for six years, and I had two of them after you turned eighteen when I could have torn the paper up."

I didn't answer.

"At the circle," he said, and his voice dropped, "when the writ took my voice, part of me was relieved."

"Relieved."

"I didn't have to find out whether I'd have stopped him. I've asked myself every night for a year, and I don't know the answer. That's what I'm kneeling for."

For a long time I only breathed.

I had come here wanting to hear him say it, and now that he had, nothing in me eased.

"I don't forgive you," I said.

"I'm not asking."

"Good. Because I don't have it yet, and I don't know when I will." I held out my hand, palm up, the way he used to when I was small and he was lifting me off a fence. "Get up, Dad. Not for you. I won't be the reason you can't stand."

He took my hand.

It shook in mine, and I let him use it and let go the moment he was upright.

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