Chapter 17: The Price

Conrad's POV

She slept with her back against my chest and my mark healing red on her neck.

I lay awake and counted her breaths instead of the dead.

It was the first night in forty years I had not counted the dead.

At first light I eased out from under her arm and dressed in the dark.

I did not wake her, because what I meant to do this morning I could not do with her watching.

The eight Alphas waited in the Hall of Moons, and they had been waiting since sunrise.

I walked in without the mask.

Not one of them looked away this time.

They looked at the scar and the age in my face, and they looked at each other.

The woman Alpha from the left end of the half circle stood first.

She had a leather-bound book in her arms.

"My pack's guard book, Your Majesty," she said. "Four girls. My father began it, and I did not stop it. I did not know how."

She laid it on the step below the broken black chair.

"I'm done being afraid of you," she said. "Do what you like with me."

I took the book.

"Sit," I said. "I will say what I like when I have heard all of you."

The grey-bearded Alpha was the last to speak.

He stood stiff with his fists at his sides, and he told me the same thing the others had told me, in fewer words.

Six girls over twenty years, and a pack that would not have lived through a burning.

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