Chapter 21: The Choice

Tiernan's POV

My father's seal was on page nine.

Stevie had never read it.

When the lights came back, Sonja's gloved hand was still on the folder, and I took it out from under her fingers.

I opened to the page standing in the doorway of the ice house, with Dane's flashlight shaking over my shoulder.

It was a half sheet of cream paper.

The top line was the Ashworth order, copied out again in a hand I knew.

Under Sonja's name sat a second signature, my father's, and the heavy red wax seal of the Kincaid alpha.

Below the seal, in pencil, someone had added a line.

It said: She said she would take Tiernan if I refused. Forgive me.

I read it twice.

The words didn't change.

"Tiernan," Dane said quietly.

"My father signed it to keep me," I said.

My voice sounded strange to me.

"She told him I was next. So he put his name to forty-one deaths."

"That's not yours to carry."

"Isn't it?"

I looked up.

Sonja stood in the middle of the floor with two of Roth's long pale hands on her shoulders.

She was not struggling.

She was looking at me with the expression I knew from childhood.

It was the one she wore when she had decided I was about to be grateful for her advice.

"Now you understand," she said gently. "Nobody was clean in that house. Your father least of all."

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