My Pack Killed My Daughter While I Served the Moon Goddess novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Feast Table

Linnea lays Tilda's body on the Alpha's table. Gareth calls it illness, calls her an oath-breaker and has her chained in silver, and promises the council will sentence her to death at dawn.

The singing stopped before I reached the head table.

Three hundred wolves turned in their chairs and looked at the silver light running down my arms.

Then they looked at what I was carrying.

I walked the length of the hall with mud to my knees.

Nobody stood up.

At the head table, Gareth sat in the Alpha's chair with a wine cup halfway to his mouth.

Beside him sat Cora in a pale yellow dress with a wreath of white flowers in her hair.

Emmett sat on her other side, and his hand was on her chair.

I swept the plates off the table with my arm.

They broke on the floor.

I laid my daughter down on the cloth where the roast had been.

Her hair slid across the wood, and she looked so small.

"Linnea," Gareth said.

He put down his cup very slowly.

"You were told to stay on the mountain."

"Look at her."

"This is not the place."

"Look at your daughter, Gareth."

His eyes went down to her face and came back up.

They were pale gray and perfectly dry.

"She was sick," he said. "A wasting illness. The healer did everything he could."

"Did he?"

The pack healer sat near the hearth with his hands flat on his knees.

He did not lift his head.

Cora was already out of her chair.

"Aunt Linnea," she said, and her voice shook. "I am so sorry. Come and sit. You're frozen."

She pulled the shawl off her own shoulders and put it around mine.

It was warm and smelled of lavender.

"I made tea for the singing," she said. "It has honey in it. Please. Drink something."

She held the cup out in both hands.

I looked at her kind, wet face and pushed the cup aside without thinking.

"I don't want it."

She set it down on the table next to Tilda's hair.

"Of course," she said softly. "Of course you don't."

I turned to the man who had stood up beside her.

"Emmett."

He stared at the cloth.

"Emmett, she is your mate. Look at her."

His throat moved, and he looked at the wall.

"You kept her in the cellar," I said.

A sound went through the hall, low and quick, and then it was gone.

"Who told you that?" Gareth said.

"Open the cellar door and let me see it."

"You will do nothing in my hall."

"Then let the healer say it," I said. "Healer. What did she die of?"

The healer's mouth opened.

Gareth's eyes moved to him, and he shut it again.

I looked around the hall for the woman who had called the wolfsbane a mercy.

I knew her voice, but there were sixty women in that room.

One of them near the hearth was studying her plate.

"All of you," I said. "Every one of you has eaten at this table while she starved."

Nobody answered.

"Do you hear me?"

Gareth got to his feet.

"That is enough."

His voice was the Alpha's voice, low and heavy, the one that made younger wolves drop their eyes.

It pressed on my chest, and the light in my arms pushed back and held.

I did not drop mine.

Something crossed his face then, and it was not grief.

It was calculation.

"The sky over this valley lit up an hour ago," he said, loud enough for everyone. "My wolves saw it from the border."

"Five years of offerings made that pillar, and the pack's shield with it."

"It was meant to guard every child in this hall."

He looked at the pack and not at me.

"My Luna broke it with her own hands."

A murmur rose, and this time it had a direction.

"She walked off her service," Gareth said. "She broke a sacred oath to the Goddess. Tonight she comes into our feast in the middle of the pack's naming of a Luna and insults the dead with her grief."

"Insults the dead?" I said. "She is lying on your table."

"Guards."

Four of them came down the hall at once.

They had silver chain looped over their shoulders, and they must have been waiting for the word.

I put a hand flat on Tilda's chest.

"Don't touch her."

"Take the body to the cold house," Gareth said.

"No."

The first chain went around my wrists.

The silver burned my skin, and the moonlight in my veins burned the silver back.

The links glowed white and smoked, and the guard who held the end let go and swore.

Another threw a second chain over the first.

I did not fight them.

I looked at Gareth and let the whole pack see my face.

"You swore on our bond," I said.

He leaned on the table.

"I swore to keep this pack alive."

He lowered his voice, so that only the wolves close to the head table could hear.

"At dawn the council tries you for the pillar."

"Oath-breaking against the Goddess carries one penalty, Linnea."

"Death."

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