Wrong Girl, Right Alpha novel · Chapter 35 of 48

Chapter 35: What I Wrote

Ronan's POV

I wrote the first letter at the council table, with the shutters closed and one lamp turned low.

I wrote with my right hand.

My left lay on the table beside the paper, where I could watch it.

It had shaken all night, and I had stopped trying to hide it from an empty room.

The letter to Dane was the easy one.

Dane, it began. You hold the seat for Hazel until she is grown, with the eldest elder at your elbow.

Listen to him for the first year. After that, listen to yourself. You are better than you think.

I signed it and left it under the lamp.

The plan was simple, and I had had it since April.

I would walk into Satterfield's ring at the Hunt Moon with one good arm, and I would not walk out.

Satterfield wouldn't either.

I would have his throat in my teeth before the gray reached my heart, and Blackwater would have no Alpha left to send across our ford.

Hazel would grow up with the ford, the east pasture and her mother.

It would hurt Nora, and then it would stop hurting her.

That was what I told myself, and I told it to myself in order, every night.

The second letter took me nine starts.

I tore up eight of them and fed them to the stove.

The ninth said: You are free. Take Hazel anywhere you like. The ford and the pasture are yours in your own name, and no one can touch them.

I am sorry I gave you a year and then a secret. Don't wait for anything.

I read it back, and it was the cruelest thing I had ever written.

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