Chapter 22: Alpha's Alpha

They brought Anson back through the side door in less than ten minutes.

Six wolves held him by the arms, and snow was caked on his good shoes.

He had lost the charcoal coat somewhere in the yard.

They threw him on his knees in front of the hearth.

The fire lit the side of his face.

"Alpha," the eldest elder said.

He bent his gray head to me, and the whole hall understood he had spoken to me.

I was standing barefoot in my mother's coat with my cropped hair still dark.

"Alpha of the Soderstrom Pack," he said, in a voice that carried to the rafters.

"And above every Alpha in the North, by the blood of the Silver. Do you accept the name?"

I looked at the people I had grown up beside.

They had watched me whipped, and some of them had looked away.

"I accept it," I said. "On terms."

A murmur ran along the tables.

"No one in this pack is lashed again for saying no. No daughter is sold."

"And Hedda Soderstrom comes home."

My aunt made a sound behind me, and Tilly caught her by the waist.

"So ordered," the elder said.

The wolves knelt.

All of them knelt in rows, with their right hands on their hearts.

I had seen them kneel to my father that way all my life.

I did not feel proud.

I felt exhausted, and warm, and strangely certain.

Only one person in that hall was still standing.

Cade stood at the edge of the hearth with his hands at his sides.

His eyes were on the man on the floor.

"Cade," I said.

"I'm not going to touch him," he said, hoarse.

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