Too Old for My Alpha, Worth the Wait for His Rival novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Sentence

Eliza stood with my father's ring in her fist and looked at me, and she did not move.

"Mom," she said. "I'm nineteen."

"I know how old you are. I was there."

"I can't run a pack. I burn toast."

"You flipped me onto my back in the barn," I said. "You told your mother a hard truth when it cost you. That is most of the job."

Her face crumpled and straightened.

"Not yet," she said. "Not today. I'm not ready."

"I know."

"Will you hold it? Until I am?"

"Until you say you are," I said. "Not one day longer."

She put the ring on her thumb because it was too big for any other finger.

Then she held out her arms, and I held her with my one good one.

Around us the pack began to move.

The oldest elder struck his staff on the ground, and the sound ran out across the circle until it was quiet again.

"The seat holds by the founder's blood," he said. "Catriona Cedarquist will keep it for Eliza Hartwell. Does anyone here speak against it?"

Nobody spoke.

Then someone near the back began to stamp, one slow beat on the earth.

Another joined, and then all two hundred wolves, a deep sound that came up through my feet.

It was the old pack way of saying yes.

I had not heard it since my father died.

My throat closed, and I did not try to speak.

"Now Braden Hartwell," the grey-haired woman said. "Bring him up."

Two wardens helped him stand, and this time he let them.

He had a blanket round his shoulders and a bruise coming up on his jaw.

He leaned on the shorter warden to keep weight off his ruined leg.

"The Moot finds you guilty of poisoning a challenge," she said. "Of lying to a mate and to a pup's mother. Of false witness under oath. Of burning evidence on the pack's ground."

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