They Cut Out My Wolf. My Father Hunts Wolves. Chapter 11

They Cut Out My Wolf. My Father Hunts Wolves. Chapter 11

Thadn’t worn it in six years.

The Warden’s coat isn’t a beautiful thing. Long grey wool, ugly if you don’t know what it is, three silver pins at the throat. My mother wore it into a bunker under a mountain and came out with three signatures and no casualties on our side.

I put it on in front of the mirror at 6 a.m. and my hands were perfectly steady.

They held the tribunal in the old Concord hall – a horseshoe of Alphas, human federal observers at long tables on the floor, a press bank at the back, cameras everywhere, because sixty million people had opinions about this now.

The room went dead silent when I came through the doors.

Not because of the coat.

Because of the two people on either side of me. My father on my right in black. My sister on my left with her hands in Her pockets. And forty Alphas who had spent six years calling my family a bedtime story were suddenly sitting very straight.

Kael was in the dock.

I almost didn’t know him. Forty pounds gone. The jaw had set crooked. They’d shaved his head for the silver collar, and when he saw me he made a sound like a man kicked in the stomach.

“Vess-”

“Warden Vesper Ashgrave,” the Speaker said. “You may present.”

I did.

I stood at that podium for two hours and eleven minutes and I never once raised my voice.

I played the sealed recording. All of it, uncut. I watched forty Alphas listen to Cassian Roe explain, in his own voice, about the ninety–day clause. I watched a human prosecutor put her hand over her mouth during the four minutes with the claws.

I entered the consent file with eleven healer signatures, dated twenty–two days before the Rite.

I entered the 2017 transfer of my mother’s silver claim, and the falsified valuation, and the internal memo where Kael

wrote push it, we’ll clean it in phase two.

And then I entered one more thing.

“Miss Voss,” I said, “has stated on record – twice – that she was born wolfless. That she never had one. That this was

the tragedy of her life and the reason for the Rendering.”

Elara’s head came up.

“The Concord’s own clinic ran her blood as a matter of course.” I laid the report down. “She carried a wolf until she was nineteen. She sold it. Voluntarily, through a broker in Marrow Creek, to clear her mother’s debts. There are eleven years of ledgers. The broker has given a statement in exchange for reduced charges.”

The hall made a noise like a wave hitting rock.

“There’s a second matter,” I said, and my voice did something then that I’m not proud of. “It’s personal. I’d have left it out, except that it’s the whole reason we’re here.”

I turned to the dock.

“Kael. Tell the room the story you tell about the girl in the woods.”

He didn’t move.

“He tells it at every dinner,” I said to the Speaker. “When he was fourteen, he got into a hunter’s silver trap on the north ridge and lay there two days. A girl found him. She broke the jaws open with a rock and carried him a mile and a half and never told anyone. He built his whole life around finding her again. And when he was twenty–eight, Elara Voss told him it

had been her.”

I put the Hunt’s field log on the table. Green ink. My mother’s handwriting.

“Trap 41, north ridge, sprung and destroyed, 9th of March. One juvenile male, released. Recovered by V., age eleven. Reprimanded for going out alone.”

The whole hall was standing up.

“It was me,” I said. “It was always me. He married the girl from the woods and gave her wolf away to a woman who’d read the story in his face and said yes, that was me because it was the fastest way into his bed.”

Kael Draven made a sound in that dock I hope I never hear again.

They sentenced Margit Voss first. Thirty years, human custody, for the Rendering of a pregnant Luna and attempted

murder of a minor.

Cassian Roe: twenty years, and the Concord mark.

Elara Voss: twenty–five years, and the mark, which means no pack on this continent will shelter her when she gets out.

And Kael Draven, Alpha of Thornfell, stripped of rank, seat and name, condemned to the silver mines for the rest of his natural life, with restitution he will never live long enough to pay.

He didn’t fight. He didn’t seem to hear a word of it.

He was looking at me.

“Warden Ashgrave,” the Speaker said. “Under Concord law the mate bond survives the sentence unless the injured party severs it in open court. Do you wish to sever?”

The hall went silent.

Kael stood up in the dock and the collar rattled and he said, “Vess. Don’t. It’s the only thing I’ve got left of you.”

“I know,” I said.

And I walked to the rail so he could see my face while I did it.

“Kael Draven. I, Vesper of Ashgrave, reject you as my mate, my Alpha, and my husband.”