Chapter 12: The Mask

My father did not flinch.

His face showed nothing at all.

"The boy is lying," he said. "He is a coward who ran from the border and would say anything to be spared."

"Alpha Kitteridge," Conrad said.

"Your Majesty, I serve you. I have served you for thirty years."

"I know," Conrad said. "You were always the first to write."

He rose from the black chair.

It was slow, and every Alpha in the half circle watched it.

"Nineteen years ago you wrote to tell me the pack of Ashfen had sent no offering for two autumns," he said. "You were the Alpha who warned me."

"Because it was true."

"Your wolves walked Ashfen's girls to the stone. This boy says what became of girls at that stone."

My father's jaw tightened. "He is an escort deserter."

"And the bite on this woman's shoulder fits your captain's jaw."

"Garrick," a woman Alpha said from the left end of the half circle. "Is it true?"

"Ashfen's daughter was my wife," my father said. "I mourned her people. I have no love for the man who butchered them."

His voice rose.

"Ask the king himself who burned Ashfen."

He pointed.

"Ask him!"

The hall waited.

Jonas stood a step behind my father with his hand on Cecily's arm. I saw that he was watching Conrad and not his father, and his face was white.

Conrad lifted both hands to the sides of his head.

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