Chapter 45: The Chair

Ewan's POV

The youngest of the Eight stood at the end of the dais with her hands flat on the table.

She was perhaps thirty, with a plain grey braid down her back.

She had barely spoken in my hearing since the spring.

"I move two things," she said.

"First, that the Standing Right be struck from the Moot's books. No Alpha should fight again for a chair he already holds."

The hall stirred.

"Second, that the full Moot name the chair of Strathmore to Ewan Strathmore, for life, and restore the seat he gave up."

"Seconded," said the heavy councillor, before she had finished.

I stood up with my arm in its sling.

"The motion needs a voice from the Keep," said the councillor. "Alpha Strathmore."

I looked across the hall at Thea.

She stood with Daphne's hand in her own and her chin up, waiting to see what I would do.

"The chair I'll take," I said.

"It's a hill and four hundred wolves and a leaking roof. It was never the Council's to give."

A few laughs went round the benches.

"The seat I won't."

The councillor lifted his brows. "Again?"

"Again." I kept my voice level.

"I gave it up once for a reason, and the reason is still true. I don't want to vote on who is a person."

The youngest of the Eight smiled for the first time.

She sat down.

The Eight voted, and the chair was mine by eight hands to none.

I did not feel lighter.

I felt something I had carried a long time go quiet.

On the way out, I passed a door at the back of the hall that stood ajar.

Inside were a lamp, a grey blanket and a plain wooden chair.

A white-haired man sat in the chair, with a Council guard at his elbow.

"Alpha Strathmore," said Hamish Gault, in his dry, cracked voice.

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