The End of Us novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: For My Sons

Nobody in the Hall spoke while the silver light faded from the seams of the stone.

Every eye in the Hall was on my hand.

"That is not possible," Maud said. Her voice had lost all its warmth.

"It's warm," I said. "It's been warm every time I touched it since I was nine. I thought it was the old wall."

"It's a trick of the light."

"Then you put your hand on it."

Maud did not move.

Quinton came around the table and took his mother by the elbow, gently, the way he had every day of his life.

"Not here," he said. "In the study. Now."

"Quinton."

"Now, Mother."

She went with him because the whole pack was watching and she could not afford to refuse.

The study door shut behind them.

I stayed by the stone with Keith at my shoulder, and the Hall began to murmur.

Then something strange happened in my chest.

It was the bond, the old one, the one I had called broken for three weeks.

It opened like a door left ajar, and Quinton's voice came through it.

I could not hear the words with my ears.

I heard them the way you hear your own thoughts, plain and close, and I shut my eyes.

"Tell me you didn't," Quinton was saying. "Tell me, and I'll believe you. I'll put you in the car and take you home."

A long silence.

"Your father was weak," Maud said. "You know that. Alpha Sheridan was a good man, and a soft one, and soft men get packs killed."

"That isn't an answer."

"There were three packs on this river. We were the smallest. I did what had to be done."

"You killed him."

"I took what he would have lost anyway."

I heard Quinton's breath go out of him.

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