Chapter 13: The Elder's Hand

Two scouts brought Garrick through the torches, but he walked on his own feet.

The pack opened for him, and the silence was worse than the torches.

He stopped at the edge of the white cloth and looked at his children.

Linnea was crying openly.

Garrick gave her a small nod.

"Garrick Niemi," the Elder said. "Twenty-four years ago you held two men on the floor of the Longhouse while I cut them."

"I did," Garrick said.

"You then drove their mate, with her baby, to the state line before the third cut."

"I did that too."

A sound went through the pack, low and unhappy.

"You've kept the Alpha's seat for twenty years on that lie," the Elder said. "Do you deny any of it?"

"No." Garrick's voice stayed even. "I never denied it to myself."

"Dad," Torsten said.

"Stay where you are, son."

I stepped forward before I could stop myself.

"You cut my mother's mates," I said to the Elder. "You killed them."

He turned to me with such a kind face that it took me a moment to understand the question was an answer.

"I enforced the law of the One Thread, child. The pack voted that law three generations ago."

"I cut what the law told me to cut, and I'd do it again tonight."

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