Too Old for My Alpha, Worth the Wait for His Rival novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: The Testimony
Catriona's POV
The Moot reopened with a bandaged hand on the head table, and it was not mine.
Alexander had let me dress the burn myself, in the kitchen, with his jaw clenched and his eyes on my face the whole time.
Now he sat at the end of the front bench with his arm in a sling.
The claw-guards lay on a white cloth in front of the elders.
Nobody in the hall was whispering anymore.
"The Moot calls Dora O'Rourke," the oldest elder said.
Dora stood.
She had slept in her clothes, and her reading glasses hung crooked on their cord.
She walked to the witness stand with her hands shaking.
She looked at me once.
I did not nod, and I did not look away.
"I was the healer's second twenty years ago," Dora said, to the room. "I carried a message from Alpha Hartwell. It was a lie, and I knew it was a lie when I said it."
She told them the rest in the same flat voice, and I listened to the sound of two hundred wolves not breathing.
When she got to the tent, and the brown glass bottle, and what had been poured into the steel, I watched faces change along the benches.
When she got to her brother, a man at the back put his hand over his eyes.
"Why tell it now?" asked the grey-haired woman elder.
"Because I let her cry for a week on my shoulder, and then I stood at her wedding," Dora said. "And every Christmas after, I asked myself what I would say when she found out. I decided I'd say it first."
She took a folded paper out of her pocket and held it up.
"The bottle is gone. Alpha Hartwell took it from my sewing box this week. He left this."
The woman elder read the note.
Keep reading free with an account. Start Too Old for My Alpha, Worth the Wait for His Rival from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.
← Chapter 17 · All chapters · Chapter 19 →
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend