My Gown Had No Gems, So I Walked Out of My Own Bonding Ceremony novel · Chapter 24 of 32

Chapter 24: The Seat

Jasper's POV

I stood at the back of the Snow Moon hall with my arms folded, because it was not my place to stand anywhere else.

Four hundred wolves filled the benches.

On the dais, Clara held a worn iron ring in her fist and looked at them.

She had not put it on.

"Say it, Miss Winslow," said the elder. "The law needs your words."

Clara breathed in.

"I take the seat of Snow Moon," she said. "I take it because the Council says it falls to me, and because I won't give it to someone who would sell it."

The hall was quiet.

"Here is what changes," she said. "Nobody in this pack is struck from the roll without a count. What they did, aloud, in this hall, in front of everyone they answer to. No Alpha decides alone."

A murmur went along the benches.

"Cecily Winslow is restored to the roll."

Clara glanced at her sister.

"The eleven stones on her gown that were mine go back to me, and she will wear what is hers."

Cecily put her face in her hands.

"Margot Winslow is not struck. She will leave this territory for one year and work for her keep at the Ironwood mine, under the beta's eye. She will have no gown and no title. When the year is done, I will decide whether she comes home."

Margot stood by the wall in plain clothes, alone.

She nodded once.

"And Gordon Winslow stays in this Lodge as a wolf of the pack," said Clara. "With no seat and no vote. I'll decide the rest when I can look at him."

Gordon bowed his head.

The elder struck the dais with her staff.

"Then kneel, Snow Moon, to your Alpha."

They knelt.

I watched them go down one bench at a time, the old cooks and the barn hands, the women who had stood in the kitchen the night she was struck.

Clara's face did not change, but I felt her through the bond.

She was frightened and proud and so tired she was trembling.

I stepped forward.

I walked up the aisle between the kneeling wolves, and I heard them hear me.

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