The Warlord of Wycliffe: The Dethroning of My False Mate novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: General Wycliffe

We rode to the border post at noon.

Dorian rode at my left, and Verity and a dozen Greyhollow wolves followed us.

I told myself I did not hope.

Eleven old men stood in a line across the road under a torn black banner.

Their coats were patched, and their beards were white.

Every one of them was missing a finger, an ear or an eye.

The oldest stepped forward on a stiff leg.

He looked at my face for a long time.

"You have your mother's chin," he said.

My throat closed.

"You knew my mother?"

"I carried her saddle bags for twenty years." He pulled himself straight. "General Wycliffe's Second Company, Second Company of the Gate. Eleven of eleven, reporting."

"My father's gate was open three years ago," I said. "Where were you?"

"Sent off, Miss." His jaw tightened. "Four days before the fall. A Greyhollow rider brought a seal and an order. Take the whole night patrol up to the north pass and wait for a message."

"Whose seal?"

"The Greyhollow Alpha's."

I felt Verity go still behind me.

"We waited nine days," the sergeant said. "No message came. When we came down, the lodge was ash."

I had seen the order's seal already, in the ledger.

My father's patrol had been sent off by the same hand that opened the gate.

"And you stayed away."

"We thought the Greyhollow seal meant they'd done it, and we'd be hanged for guarding a dead family. We hid in the mountain. We heard last week at a trading post that a young woman called Wycliffe had thrown the Greyhollow Alpha to his knees."

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