Chapter 15 · Claimed in Open Court

Chapter 15: Claimed in Open Court

The blade goes through his throat before I even finish screaming his name.

Kane doesn't flinch. He just watches the inquisitor fold, hands at his own neck, blood sheeting black over the silver collar of his robe. The microphone on the dais picks up the wet sound of it and throws it across the whole roll-call hall, amplified, ugly, final.

"Kane." My voice comes out wrecked. "What did you just do."

"Fixed your paperwork." He doesn't look at the body. He looks at me, chained wrists and all, like I'm the only thing in the room worth his attention. "He forged a signature on your trial sheet. That's a death offense in this pack. I just collected."

The hall is on its feet. Two hundred wolves, half of them Elders in their ceremonial collars, the other half night-shift fighters who clawed their way into the gallery because word got out that Rhee Calder's secret score was finally getting read out loud. None of them expected a corpse.

"He's an Alpha King's inquisitor," someone shouts from the back. "You don't get to execute a royal officer on the floor.