My Twin Was Meant to Die at Sixteen, So They Spent Me novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Vote

The note rang out slowly, over the roof and the pasture, and then it was gone.

Nobody in the Hall said a word.

My hand was still locked around Clara's, and I felt her pulse jump once against my palm.

"Hester," my mother said. "What did the Stone say?"

"I don't know," Hester said.

She said it plainly, the way she said everything, and I think that frightened people more than a guess would have.

"It rang. It has never rung for a man's offer before. I can't tell you if that was a yes or a warning."

My father stayed on his knees with his head bowed.

"Then let it stand until midnight on the birthday," he said. "Let me go up on the Stone. That's all I ask."

The old elder on the front bench got to his feet.

He leaned on his stick, and his voice was thin and very steady.

"You can ask that as a man, Edwin," he said. "You can't ask it as our Alpha."

My father looked up.

"Cold Spring law," the elder said. "The Alpha holds the seat by the raised hands of the pack. Any Luna or elder can call the count. I'm calling it."

"Second," said the Beta.

He said it from the back of the room, loud, without looking at my father.

"Edwin," the elder said. "Do you wish to speak?"

My father's mouth worked.

For the first time that night, he had nothing smooth to say.

"No," he said.

"Then hands. All who say he keeps the seat."

I watched the room.

Not one hand went up.

"All who say he is done."

My mother's hand went up first.

Then Rowan's mother, the cook, still in her flour-stained apron, with her fist high in the air.

Then the Beta's.

Then the old woman who had been crying, and the men at the long table, and the young couple by the pillars, and then so many at once that I could not count them.

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