The Luna He Failed to Protect novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: Ashes

"Take the book from her," Morwenna told her guards.

Two of them came up the steps.

Edda stepped in front of me.

The tracker came up off the porch boards with his hackles standing.

Both twins closed in at my back, one bleeding and one naked, and neither of them cared.

The guards stopped.

They were house guards.

They'd never held a slot in a gorge.

"Luna," one of them said, uncertain.

"She's a thief," Morwenna said. "Take it."

"Nobody takes it."

Cale's voice came from the dark at the edge of the trees.

He walked into the lantern light still black with soot from the mill.

His shirt was burned through at one shoulder.

He'd followed our scent up the ridge.

I could see it on him: he'd come fast and on four legs and then back to two.

"Cale," Morwenna said. "Go home."

He didn't look at her.

He looked at me, and at the book, and then he held out his hand.

Not for the book.

Palm up, open, toward me.

"May I read it?" he said.

The whole ridge heard him ask.

I gave it to him open at the last page.

He read the line.

He read the margin.

He read it again, the way I had.

Then he closed it gently and handed it back to me.

"The elder keeps the law," he said to the guards. "The book goes to him tonight, sealed, and nobody touches it until the moon. That's an order from the acting Alpha."

"You can't," Morwenna said.

"I can until Father says otherwise." He turned to his uncle on the step. "And you'll stay in this cabin until morning. If you come down that ridge tonight, I'll hear about it."

Garth smiled at him.

"You're a boy," he said. "You were a boy at that dinner too."

Cale didn't answer.

He walked down the trail beside me, all the way to the elder's door.

He didn't say a word the whole way.

Neither did I.

In the morning the round hall was full again.

Morwenna had sent runners to every house before dawn.

She wanted the theft charge read out in front of the pack, and she wanted me standing alone on the floor while she did it.

She got that.

I stood on the stones in my garrison coat.

The squad stood at the back.

The lumber father stood with them.

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