The Alphas Broken Mate novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Every Name

They dug the wax out of Merrick's ears in front of both packs.

Two of Caius's captains held his head still, and the scarred warrior worked a bone pick into each canal.

The yellow plugs came out in dark crumbs and dropped on the flagstones.

Merrick cursed them the whole time, in a voice I had heard all my childhood at the dinner table.

"Osric is at her grave now," he said, and smiled at me. "Hurry, little Lark. Silver eats a stone slowly."

My hands went cold, and Caius said a rider was already saddled for the valley.

I told him to wait, because Merrick was the only one who knew how many men Osric had taken.

When it was done, he sat on the floor of the great hall with his broken arm in his lap.

He glared up at me.

"Do it, then," he said. "Kneel me. It will not make me talk."

I came down off the dais and stopped an arm's length from him.

I had never tried anything but the one note.

I did not know what else my voice could do.

But I knew what I wanted from it.

I took a breath, and the bond hummed up from my chest into my split tongue.

"Merrick Ashdown," I said.

It came out low and clear, and it was a Call.

Every wolf in the hall felt it.

I felt them lean toward the sound without knowing why.

"Tell me the names," I said. "Every one."

His mouth opened against his will.

He fought it.

I watched his jaw lock, and the veins stand out on his neck, and a bead of sweat run into his beard.

"Every one," I said again.

"The miller's son," Merrick said, and his voice broke in half. "The two brothers from the ford."

He said them one at a time.

They were the names of the men who had worn grey cloaks turned red on the night my valley burned.

Forty of them.

I did not write them down, because I did not need to.

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