Chapter 8: The Torn Page

Lachlan waited until Rowena's lamp went out, then drove to the Council hall.

He stayed within the twenty yards for as long as the road let him.

At the gate, the pull in his chest turned into a hook, and he let it.

It was worth the pain.

The Founders' Book lived in a locked cabinet in the back room.

He was the only man alive with the key.

He had never opened it for anything but a naming.

Tonight he laid it flat on the table under the lamp and began at the first page.

Orson had tricked him at the clinic.

Lachlan had seen it the moment the pen left his hand.

The paper had been waiting, and the three wolves had been told what to say.

Any harm she does is on your seat.

Orson wanted her to snap at someone. Orson wanted a reason.

So Lachlan wanted a rule, any rule at all, that let an Alpha take back what he had said.

He read until his eyes burned.

The book was a ledger, a year to a page, in the cramped hands of dead men.

It held births, deaths, boundary disputes and a Council vote about a bridge.

Nothing about rejections. Nothing about hanging bonds.

His father's hand appeared near the end, firmer than he remembered.

He did not read those pages.

He turned back, searching for older entries, and the paper stopped feeling right under his thumb.

The spine of the book was thick. One section, around the year his grandfather took the seat, was thin.

He checked the leaves.

Four pages had been cut out with a sharp blade.

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