The Alpha Hunts the Exiles, So I Let Him Catch Me novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Vote

The eleven houses voted in the long barn of the Hollow, by torchlight, on a Monday night in the last week of January.

They sat on hay bales and upturned buckets with their bells in their laps, twenty-nine people and a good many goats.

I stood up in front of them with my cropped hair and my burn, and I said what I had to say in four lines.

I said that they had been put out by a liar, and that the liar was still Bell-keeper.

I said that Haizpea would not want them back, and that I wanted to go home anyway.

I said that I would walk over the stone at Candlemas with or without them.

Then I sat down, because my knees had begun to shake.

The eldest, who had taught Unai to shear, rose on his stick.

"Hands," he said. "Whoever walks."

The stout woman in the black scarf had her hand up before he finished the word.

So did a child on her father's shoulders, and then the whole barn, twenty-nine hands and a bell ringing in each of them.

Unai stood at the back with his beret crushed in both fists.

He did not vote.

He had no right to.

When the eldest looked at him, he only bowed his head.

Aritz walked me down through the snow afterwards, as far as the stone.

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