He Ignored My Pain, So I Left Him in Regret novel · Chapter 16 of 32
Chapter 16: The Elders' Tent
We rode back down through the sleet and reached the Hollin flat at noon.
The elders did not wait for me to change my coat.
They had set the tent flaps wide open, and the whole caravan stood in the churned mud outside, wagon after wagon, hundreds of faces.
Somebody had moved my chair to the middle of the rug.
I understood the stage had been built for me.
Joss stopped at my shoulder.
"You don't have to go in there alone," he said, quietly, for me only.
"I'm not alone. I've got eleven ledgers and a bad temper."
"That's a better army than most."
I walked in.
The five elders sat in their half circle.
Rafe sat on a stool at the end of the row with his crutches across his knees, grey and thin and watching the floor.
Maud sat beside him.
She did not look at me.
"Ivy Penrose," the oldest man said. "You are called before the pack to answer a charge."
"I know the charge. I read it in a sleet storm."
Somebody in the crowd coughed to hide a laugh.
The elder frowned and unrolled his own paper.
"That you broke the rite at Moonwell Hall. That you petitioned for a dissolution without the elders' leave. And that in doing so you took the Alpha's strength from this pack and left him on his back for the winter."
"I didn't take his strength."
"The Alpha lies wounded. The pack has no steady hand."
"The Alpha lies wounded because the wound came home," I said.
My voice carried well, and I let it.
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