Chapter 5: Bitter

I should have stayed in my seat.

I knew exactly what that chair meant.

I knew what the north would say about a rejected Luna who sat in it three days after her bond tore.

I looked at Rune instead.

He'd gone completely still.

That decided it.

I stood up, walked the length of the high table past eleven Alphas, and climbed the step.

Haakon held the chair while I sat down in it.

Then he sat down in his own, beside me, and picked up his wine.

The hall stayed silent for one long breath.

Then the Iron Range Alpha started to laugh, a big helpless bark of a laugh, and slapped the table.

Down below, Freya stood frozen with Rune's hand still held up in hers.

She dropped it.

"Papa," she said. "That's Mama's chair."

"It's Kingsfall's chair," Haakon said. "Sit down and finish your dinner."

She didn't sit down.

She walked out of the hall with her head high and her heels cracking on the stone, and after a second Rune went after her.

He looked back at me once from the doorway.

I lifted my water glass to him.

I made myself stay through the cheese and the coffee and the toasts.

I made myself laugh at a terrible joke from the Alpha of the Boundary Lakes.

I sat in that chair until the last guest went up to bed.

Then I followed Haakon out the side door onto the terrace, where the wind came straight off the lake and nobody could hear us.

He was leaning on the stone wall with his back to me.

"You used me," I said.

He didn't turn around. "Did I."

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