I Hid My Sister's Killer, So the Alpha Poured Truth Down My Throat novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Council

"Stay here," Kellan said.

I was already swinging my legs off the bed.

"No."

"You can't stand."

"Then I'll sit in front of them," I said. "Get me a coat."

He looked at me, and he knew he had lost.

Then he took his own coat off the hook and put it around my shoulders, and he did not touch me while he did it.

Rule three, I thought.

I was glad he remembered, and I was sorry too.

Hester took one of my arms.

On the porch, Osric stood with five elders in a half circle and the lamplight on his silver beard.

"Alpha," he said, as warm as ever. "Forgive the hour."

"You've got something to say."

"The elders do." He turned his open hands to them. "I only carry it."

The oldest of them struck his cane on the boards.

It was the old man who had said Aldric buried the girl.

"The pack charter forbids witch draughts on a member of the pack," he said. "Hester Marl brewed one. The Alpha ordered it, and the charter doesn't excuse an Alpha."

"She is also the one who found the monkshood," Kellan said.

"So she says."

"I smelled it myself."

"After the cup had left your hands," Osric said gently. "I only ask the council to sit tonight, Alpha, while the pack is frightened. Let the witch answer. Let the woman answer. Let's close this before it eats us."

I saw what he was doing.

He was giving Kellan a way to end it.

Kellan could say yes, and let the council burn Hester for the draught and call my words poison, and all of this would go quiet.

Kellan's jaw tightened.

"The council sits," he said. "In the hall, in an hour."

"Thank you, Alpha."

"And she comes."

"Of course," Osric said, and smiled at me.

I smiled back, and it hurt my teeth.

The hall was full again.

They had lit every lamp, and the cold of the stone came up through my borrowed boots.

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