Chapter 26 · Say It to My Face

"Say it again."

I kept both palms flat on the table. "Fourteen weeks and three days. Three of those sat in your cells waiting on the Tribunal, fourteen on the road after that. It adds up, Alpha. I've had a long time to check."

"Say it to my face."

I looked up. Big mistake. Flat gray eyes — the ones that come out right before somebody loses a head — except underneath there was something I never once saw in six years of his bed. Fear. Small, human, pathetic fear.

"It's yours," I said. "It was yours the morning you cut me in front of four hundred wolves and called me a waste of a Luna."

His jaw hitched. He stepped back and the air came back into the room.

"Alpha." Orla had her bottles hugged to her chest, eyes on the stone — the only one in that hall smart enough not to look at me. "She needs an exam. Not here."

"Not here." Then, louder: "Out. All of you. Now."

They scattered — councilmen, guards, the maids who'd been fake-dusting the same table for ten minutes. The door banged.

Everybody but Vane.

"An heir.