Chapter 26: The Truth

My mother climbed the five plank steps with a paper cup in each hand.

Nobody stopped her.

She looked like every council wife who had ever brought a sick child a drink.

"Girls," she said, softly, as if the whole bowl were not listening. "You'll lose your voices. Have something warm first."

Cora lowered the microphone.

Two deputies had started toward the steps, and I shook my head at them.

I wanted the territory to see it.

"Mom," Cora said. "What's in it?"

"Honey and chamomile."

"What else?"

My mother's smile held.

"Sweetheart, you're frightened. Don't make this ugly in front of everyone."

"That's why I'm doing it in front of everyone," Cora said.

She lifted the microphone again.

"My mother handed me a cup every morning for nine years," she said.

"I drank every one, until the day she told us the truth."

The crowd had gone so quiet I could hear the fire pit ticking.

"There was never a wolf in it that belonged to me. I burned my leg in a training room, and my wolf died that afternoon."

A groan went through the chairs.

"The tonic was my sister's blood.

"My mother took it from her every month, and I wore it on Saturdays so you'd have something to watch."

"That is not what..." my mother began.

"Mrs. Garrick," the Alpha said from the foot of the stage. "You will let the girl finish."

She closed her mouth.

I stepped up beside Cora and took the microphone when she held it out.

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