Chapter 22: The Alphas Kneel

By noon three packs stood on the ridge below the tree.

Bloodwood's red cloaks stood on the left and Stormbrook's grey on the right.

Lucan's Ashfall wolves held the middle, with the grey-cloaked man and the housekeeper kneeling at their feet.

Perrin still knelt in the snow where I had left him.

Nobody had needed to tie him.

My arm had been bound with a strip of Lucan's shirt, and the silver in it throbbed with every beat of my heart.

I stood in front of the tree, and I did not sit down.

"Alpha Stagg," I said.

Theron stepped forward.

"Strip your Beta of his rank," I said. "Here. In front of your pack."

He did not hesitate.

He walked to Perrin, took the Stormbrook badge from the torn collar of the long grey coat, and snapped the pin in his fingers.

"Perrin Harker is no Beta of Stormbrook," Theron said, in a voice that carried to the back. "He is no man of mine."

A low growl went through the grey cloaks.

I turned to my brother.

"The law of Bloodwood gives me his life," I said.

Perrin lifted his head.

"I won't take it. My children will not be told their mother killed a man on her knees in the snow."

His eyes closed.

"You'll walk to the Greywater woods," I said. "On foot, alone, with nothing but what you're wearing."

I waited.

"There's a hollow house in the trees by the stream, and a hollow log behind it."

He stared at me.

"I lived there ten years. You can have it."

I stepped closer.

"No pack will feed you or shelter you, and no pack will say your name."

"You can't."

"I have," I said. "Go."

He rose very slowly.

Nobody spoke as he walked down the ridge, a thin figure getting smaller in the snow, and not one wolf turned to watch him.

Then Theron dropped to one knee.

A rustle went through the Stormbrook ranks.

He looked up at me with a face stripped bare.

"I kneel to the Alpha of Bloodwood," he said, "and I ask pardon for myself."

"For what?"

"For the door. For the words. For letting your brother put you in the snow while I bonded another woman by lamplight."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Rejected for Being Barren, Now the Alphas Kneel from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.