The New Moon Mate のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 131 - チャプター 140

The square was silent and the whole of the pack was looking at Elias and Elias was looking at me.“You were there,” I said. “In 1953. When my mother signed the contract.”“I was there,” he said. “I was twenty-nine years old and I had been on my own for seven years and I was working on a fishing boat in Oregon and I had come inland for the winter to look for work. I was in Walla Walla and I was in a churchyard on a Sunday morning and there was a woman sitting on a bench with a green scarf around her neck.”“That was 1968,” I said. “You told me it was 1968.”“That was 1968,” Elias said. “And this was 1953 and the woman was your mother and she was twenty-three years old and she was not sitting on a bench. She was standing in the doorway of a house in Walla Walla with a paper in her hand and she was crying.”I stood in the square.“Go on,” I said.“I had come to Walla Walla because the curse had brought me there. The new moon had taken me east and I woke up in a field outside the town and

The rival Alpha came the next morning.He came down the ridge road with twelve wolves and a truck and a flag that was not the Council's and was not the north's and he stopped at the gap and sent a rider ahead.The rider came into the square on a horse and got down and took his hat off."Alpha," he said. "The Alpha of the Snoqualmie pack sends his respects and asks leave to enter the territory."I stood on the steps."The Snoqualmie pack is two hundred miles west," I said. "What does the Alpha of the Snoqualmie pack want in the Palouse?""He says he has a thing to offer," the rider said. "And he says it is a thing the Luna is going to want."I looked at the ridge road and the twelve wolves and the truck."Let him come," I said.The Snoqualmie Alpha came into the square at noon.He was tall and he was broad and he had dark hair and a beard and he was not old and he was not young and he walked into the square like a wolf who had been an Alpha since he was twenty and had never been afraid

The circle was dark and the whole of the clearing was dark and the forty Alphas of the full Council were standing at the edge of the trees with their staffs and their papers and their faces.The Alpha of the Alphas put his staff on the ground and said it again.“The curse is broken. The land is the pack’s. And the blood debt is still owed.”I stood in the middle of the circle with the cloak on my shoulders and my hands at my sides and the whole of the pack around me in wolf form and the whole of the line behind them.“The blood debt is mine,” I said. “I put the axe in the Gamma of the north and I did it in this circle and I did it to save my mate. If the Council wants a wolf for the debt, the wolf is me.”The clearing was silent.And then the Alpha of the Alphas said, “The blood debt is not a debt against the Alpha. It is a debt against the pack. And a debt against the pack is settled by the pack.”I looked at him.“What does that mean?” I said.“It means the pack decides,” the Alpha

Arden came into the pack house kitchen with four of his wolves behind him and he sat down at the table without being asked and put his hat on it.“Alpha,” he said. “I have been thinking about your offer.”“I did not make you an offer,” I said.“You made me a choice,” Arden said. “And I have been thinking about it and I have decided that you are right. The Council is going to fall and I am not going to be the wolf who stood on the wrong side of the circle.” He put his hand on the table. “So I am going to bring four hundred wolves to the Council hearing in Boise and I am going to stand with the Palouse Ridge pack.”I sat down across from him.“And what do you want in exchange?” I said.“The mill land,” Arden said.“The mill land is the pack’s.”“The mill land is the pack’s and the pack is going to need a wolf to hold it while the Alpha is in Boise.” He put his hand on the table. “Give me the mill land and the east field and the circle for twenty years. Not forever. Twenty years. And the

The Council came down the ridge road in a line four hundred long and they did not stop at the gap.They came through the north fence and into the east field and the whole of the field was full of them and the whole of them had rifles and axes and silver on their belts.And there were eleven Alphas in front of them on horses.I stood at the stone wall with the whole of the pack behind me and the whole of the Luna's line and the whole of the eleven Alphas of the north and the keeper."Pack," I said. "Hold the wall."The first line came to the wall and the wall held.The second line came and the wall held.The third line came and the wall broke in three places and the whole of the east field was full of wolves.I was in the middle of it.It was the same as it had been the first time and it was different. The first time I had been a Gamma with a fence post and a pack that had been lied to. This time I was the Alpha and the whole of the territory was behind me and the whole of the line was