My Mate and Family's Choice novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Price

My mother would not come inside until Rodrick's whole pack was in the room.

I didn't understand why until she explained it.

"I want your guard to hear every word," she said. "Everything I say tonight I'll say in front of witnesses."

There were twelve MacAlister wolves in the main room, on benches and on the floor, with bowls of stew in their hands.

They went quiet when she walked in, and not one of them looked at her kindly.

Junie came in behind her and went straight to my side.

She didn't say a word, but she took my hand again, and this time her grip was warm and steady.

Rodrick stood against the far wall with his arms folded.

My mother stopped in the middle of the floor.

She looked small among all those broad shoulders, and she held her back as straight as a rail.

"Nine years ago my husband killed Tam MacAlister at the Elk Fork boundary," she said.

Nobody in the room moved.

"Edwin hid it. He told the Council it was a poacher. For nine years the MacAlisters have known the truth and never claimed the debt."

"That's right," said the lean man by the stove.

"Three weeks ago I came to Rodrick myself," my mother said. "I told him the Haskins pack owed his pack a life. I asked him to call the debt, and to take my daughter as the payment."

I heard a stool scrape.

It was my own.

I had stood up without knowing it.

"You offered me," I said.

"Yes."

"To the man whose brother Dad killed."

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