Sold to the Wolf Chief for a Debt, but His Wolf Knelt First novel · Chapter 14 of 24
Chapter 14: Not Forgiveness
He knocked at midnight, three times, with the flat of his hand.
I opened the drying room door and he stood in the passage with nothing in his hands and nothing in his face.
"Peigi's lad," I said. "You do nothing about him until the ring."
"If the Chief buys one boy back, they'll say the Chief's hand did it."
He said nothing at all, and I took the silence for a yes.
I pulled him in by his shirt front and shot the bolt.
The drying room was the warmest place in Ardach House.
Hot pipes ran along one wall, and clean sheets hung from the rails in long white rows.
A low lamp stood on the slatted floor.
The air smelled of soap and scorched cotton.
On the bench under the window sat a heap of folded linen as high as my knee.
"Kneel," I said.
He went down on the slats in front of me, in his shirt, with his hands on his thighs.
"You said you were sorry in front of sixty-one people," I said. "Now say what you did."
He lifted his head.
"I put my seal on a paper that said your mother had no place in the ground," Coll said.
"I did not read her name. She was born on this hill, and I put her out of it."
"Say her name," I said.
"Morag."
"All of it."
His throat worked.
"Morag Macrae of the Grey House," he said. "Gow, by marriage."
I had waited seven years to hear anyone say it in that order.
My eyes stung, and I let them, and he watched me do it and did not look away.
"This is not forgiving you," I said.
"I'd not want it to be," Coll said.
"I want this, and I'm not giving you the other," I said. "Do you understand the difference?"
"Aye," he said.
"Good."
I took off my jumper first.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of Sold to the Wolf Chief for a Debt, but His Wolf Knelt First are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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