Chapter 24: Her Name

I walked into the Moot Hall in the same plain brown shirt I had worn to the ring.

The doors stood open.

The whole pack was inside.

They filled the benches and the aisles and the gallery above, and they stood three deep along the walls where Aldric's portraits had hung.

Over the great door, in fresh white chalk, someone had written NESSA HARLOW.

I stopped under it.

A sound rose in the hall, low and steady.

It took me a moment to understand that it was not a growl.

They were saying her name.

Hundreds of voices said it quietly, over and over.

I walked up the aisle with my hands shaking.

Kellan waited at the front, beside the council table.

He wore the iron cuff on his arm.

He did not smile, and I felt every part of him straining toward me through the bond.

"Brigid Harlow," he said, and the hall went still.

"You were cast out of this pack by my father's word. You were cursed by your own blood."

"You were called a traitor in this room for keeping a name you could not say."

"I could pardon you now. I have the power. I could restore you with a word."

"Don't," I said.

"I won't."

He turned and faced the benches.

"The pack cast her out," he said, "so the pack must take her back."

"A pardon from me is worth nothing. I ask the pack to speak."

He stepped aside, and he left me standing alone in the middle of the floor.

Nobody moved.

Then the old man with the cane rose from the council table.

He walked, slowly, down the aisle to where I stood.

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