Chapter 43: Ninety-One

She came down the steps faster than a woman of ninety-one should have been able to move.

I saw the knife catch the moon.

"One cup," Opal Harkness said, and her voice cracked in the middle.

"Stop," said the gray hat.

"One cup. Sixty years, and I will have one cup of the blood that cured me."

She was coming straight at my throat.

I did not have time to say anything at all.

Ronan stepped in front of me.

He didn't push me aside.

He put his left arm up between her hand and my face.

It was the wrist she had cut that afternoon, and the blade went into it again.

The sound he made was short.

He closed his right hand around her wrist and held it.

She was strong, stronger than her bones should have allowed, and she twisted and fought him with her whole weight.

"Let go," she hissed. "Let go, you hollow thing."

"No."

"I have you for a cup. Only a cup."

"You had me for a cup," said Ronan. "You can't have her."

He squeezed.

The Moot's knife dropped out of her fingers and rang on the stone step, and his blood ran down the blade and dripped off the point.

Abel put himself on her left side and the Pine Fork Alpha took her right.

They held her elbows.

She stood between them on the courthouse steps with her white hair loose and her hands shaking in the air.

She tried to pull away.

Her legs wouldn't hold her.

"Let me up," she said.

"Ma'am," said Abel. "You're up."

"Let me stand."

She sank down on the step between them, slowly, with her torn glove in her lap.

I was already tearing my cardigan sleeve.

I wound it around Ronan's forearm above the cut, and he let me, and his blood ran through the wool.

"It's deep," I said.

"It's fine."

"It's not fine."

"I'm standing up," Ronan said. "I'm right beside you."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Wolf Who Saved Me Makes Other Alphas Submit. I'm Human. from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.