This Time, I Won't Beg for His Mark novel · Chapter 13 of 24
Chapter 13: Tabled
The elders heard my challenge at nine the next morning, on the hall steps, with half the pack standing in the snow below.
Lucan wasn't there.
Hester was, in her good coat, with her hands folded at the top of the steps.
The eldest read my petition out loud.
"Valerie Wray calls the Wray right on the seat of Cold Spur."
A sound went through the crowd.
An old man took off his cap.
"The oath is older than this council," said the woman on his left. "The white wolf of the Wray line may call the seat, and the Alpha must meet her at the Moon Stone."
"Then it's simple," I said.
"It isn't," said Hester.
She came down one step, gently, and the whole crowd leaned toward her.
"Nobody here wants to stand in the way of Ansel's daughter. I held her at his grave."
She let that sit.
"But my son is sick, and he can't stand. And the man who put a knife in his Alpha's back sits in our cell, with sixty of his people at our gate."
"The knife wasn't his," I said.
"Then the trial will say so." Hester turned to the elders. "One thing at a time, I'm asking. Try the knife first. Then hear the girl about the seat, when the Alpha is well enough to answer."
"That's a delay," I said.
"It's an order of business, dear."
The eldest looked at the third elder, a heavy man who had not spoken once in three days.
The heavy man looked at his boots.
"Tabled," he said. "Until the trial."
The eldest shut his mouth hard and said nothing.
Hester smiled at me over the crowd, sad and kind.
"Your witness pass ends with the trial, Val. You understand that."
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