No Longer Luna novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: What Colton Paid

Colton came back to Fernbank on the sixth day, in a car one of his own men drove, with his arm in a sling.

I was in the yard with my father, and three of our eleven were mending the broken window frame.

Nobody put down a tool.

He got out slowly, holding his ribs.

Under his coat he wore no blazer and no pack-colors pin, just a plain gray shirt that had been washed too many times.

"Alpha Dunlap," he said to my father, "may I speak in front of your pack?"

My father looked at me.

I shrugged, because it was not my pack to give.

"Say it," my father said.

Colton looked around at the faces in the yard, and his color went, and he said it anyway.

"I signed the order that sent Cinderfell across your bridge."

He kept his eyes up.

"I told Lowell Drummond I wanted Skye back, and I didn't ask how."

"A boy of sixteen was bitten, and a window broke, and your hands shook for a week."

"Every part of that is mine."

Nobody answered.

A woman near the porch folded her arms.

"Where's the boy?" Colton said.

"Inside," my father said. "His mother is with him."

"May I see them?"

"They may not want to see you."

"Then I'll wait."

The boy's mother came out on the porch.

She was a heavy woman with her son's chin, and she'd known me since I was born.

She came down the steps and stood in front of Colton with her hands on her hips.

"I sat up three nights with my boy's arm," she said. "You can start there."

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