All Chapters of The New Moon Mate: Chapter 101 - Chapter 110

The Council chamber was round and it had a dome and the dome had a skylight in it and the light came down through the skylight in a long white shaft and landed on the floor in the middle of the room.There were forty chairs in a ring around the floor and thirty-three of them were filled.The seven Alphas who had sat on the tribunal were not in their chairs. They were standing at the back of the chamber with Ada Kessler in her chair and the Riverside wolves behind them and they had been told to wait outside and they had not waited.And in the middle of the room, in the light, there was a table with a register on it and a man standing behind the table.It was the chief clerk.He was old and his hair was white and he had a folder in his hand and he was smiling.“Beta,” he said. “You are late.”“I am not late,” I said. “I am the last to arrive and that is not the same thing.”The thirty-three Alphas turned and looked at me.I walked into the middle of the chamber with the crates and the s

The chamber had been cleared and the tables had been moved and the forty chairs had been pushed back against the wall and the whole of the room was empty except for the shaft of light coming down through the skylight and the table in the middle of it.The chief clerk was in a chair in the corner with two Riverside wolves on either side of him and his folder on the floor at his feet.The thirty-three Alphas sat in a half circle at the north end of the room and Ada Kessler sat in the middle of them in her chair with a blanket over her knees.Harlan was there. He had come in an hour ago with Maeve and he was sitting at the end of the row with his hat on his knees and his face gray and he did not look like a wolf who had been carried in a truck for four hours.I stood in the shaft of light with the crates and the stones and the photograph on the table in front of me."Alphas," Ada Kessler said. "This chamber has voted to hear the claim of blood. The claim is made by Wren Halloran, Beta of

I took the doll down off the rail and turned it over in my hand.It was made of wheat stalks tied with string and it had a head and two arms and a body and it was about the length of my hand. It was not a child's toy. It was the kind of thing a farmer makes in the field when he is waiting for the wagon and has nothing to do with his hands. I had made a hundred of them when I was a girl, sitting on the tailgate of Harold's truck with Owen, and we had thrown them at each other across the yard until our mother came out and told us to stop wasting the wheat.But this one had something inside it.I felt it through the stalks when I squeezed it. It was hard and it was small and it was in the middle of the bundle where the body should have been. I pulled the string loose and the wheat came apart in my hands and the stalks fell on the porch boards and there was a thing in the middle of them.It was a small piece of stone. It was gray and flat and it had a line in it and it was warm.“Wren,” J

The archivist stood at the end of the mill road with the warrant in his hand and the car behind him and the other wolf beside him."Alpha," he said. "I am going to read the warrant.""Read it," I said.He read it. It was short and it was in the chief clerk's hand, and it said the Alphas of the north had ruled the claim of blood void and the curse void and the deed of 1891 void, and that the Alpha of the Palouse Ridge pack was to be taken to Boise and held until the full moon."The chief clerk is in a cell," I said."The chief clerk is in a cell," the archivist said. "And this warrant was signed by him before he went into it. He signed forty of them in one night and gave them to the riders and the riders have been carrying them north for a week."I stood in the road."You have a paper," I said. "And I have a ruling from the full Council of Alphas that says the claim is granted and the land is the Luna's line. Which paper is worth more?""The ruling of the full Council is suspended," th

The howl went down the north road and the company answered it and Elias went into the road with his fur up and his teeth showing.I went after him.“Elias,” I said. “Elias. Do not.”He did not hear me. He was a wolf and the wolf did not know my name and the wolf was looking at the nine stones and the gray wolf in the middle of them and the piece of the boundary stone on the flat rock.Halloran came off the flat rock and stood in the road.He was old and he was gray and he was thin and the scar through his eyebrow was white in the lantern light. He was not a big wolf. He was the kind of wolf who had been strong once and had gone thin in a cell.“Beta,” he said. He was not speaking out loud. It came through the mind link and it came into my head like a voice in a room. “I am not going to fight your mate. I am going to make you a trade.”I stood in the road.“Say it,” I said.“The company is forty men and a cannon and the cannon is loaded with silver shot,” Halloran said. “If your mate r