All Chapters of The Wolf She Silenced: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

I went up the stairs two at a time and Maren came behind me with her basket and her mouth set.The Alpha was sitting up in bed with a blanket over his knees and a cup of broth in his hands, and his eyes were open and clear and his face had colour in it. He looked like a wolf who had slept for a year and woken up hungry."Elif," he said. "Sit down. You look like a wolf who has been running up and down a mountain for a month.""I have been running up and down a mountain for a month." I sat on the edge of the bed. "Father. The Alpha of Çamlıca is in the guest wing and the envoy of Çamlıca has come over to us and there is an impostor in the chair of Çamlıca who is coming tonight with three packs behind him."The Alpha put his cup down."Then I have woken up in time," he said. "Get the elders. Get the council. Get every wolf in this pack into the long room and get me my chair.""Father, you cannot stand.""I do not need to stand. I need to sit in my chair and say a thing to the pack and th

They carried him up the stairs and put him in his bed and Maren came with her basket and her grey eyes steady."Half an hour," she said. "No more. He needs to sleep."The Alpha waved his hand at her. "Get out, Maren."She went. I sat on the edge of the bed and took his hand and he looked at me for a long moment."Elif," he said. "Listen to me. I am not going to be awake in the morning. I can feel it going already, the way it goes.""Father.""Listen." His hand tightened on mine. "There is a thing I have to tell you and I have to tell it now while I can still hold it. There are two Fearchars. You know that now. The one on the coast is the one who broke the line a hundred years ago and the one in the chair of Çamlıca is the one who has been running the coast for twenty years. But they are not the only ones. There is a third."I sat on the edge of the bed with his hand in mine."A third," I said."A third Fearchar. The youngest of the three. He has been on this mountain for a month." The

The Alpha was awake and he was not going to be awake long.He was propped against the pillows with the blanket over his knees and his hands on top of it, and his eyes were open and clear and his face had gone the colour of old paper."Elif," he said. "Sit down."I sat on the edge of the bed and took his hand."The vial," he said. "Did you find it?""I found it.""Then you know." His hand tightened on mine. "The bond was never yours. The bond on the cairn was a false bond and the wolf who laid it is the wolf in your guest wing. He laid it to wake your wolf and he laid it to break your line and he has been lying to you since the night you came down the ridge."I sat on the edge of the bed with his hand in mine."The bond is false," I said."The bond is false." His eyes were closing. "The warden prepared the cairn and the wolf in your guest wing prepared the rogue and the rogue came over the cairn with a false claim and a vial and a clean name. And the bond that woke your wolf was a bond

Nadia's words sat in the hollow and nobody moved."A true bond that was laid with a false ritual," I said."A true bond that was laid with a false ritual." Nadia set the lamp down on the fallen stone. "The ritual is a tool, Luna. It is not the bond. A wolf can lay a true bond with a false ritual if the bond between the two wolves is true. And a bond that is true cannot be broken by the counter-ritual, because the counter-ritual is a tool for breaking false bonds." She looked at me. "But a true bond that was laid with a false ritual can break the wolf who laid the ritual. That is what the old books say. That is what I have been waiting a hundred years to see."I stood in the hollow with the vial in my hand."Then the bond on me is true," I said."The bond on you is true." Nadia looked at Cemal at the back of the hollow. "The ritual was false. The cairn was prepared. The claim was a lie. But the bond between the two of you is true, and the wolf who laid the false ritual on a true bond h

The long room was full when I got there.Orhan was at the head of the table with a stack of ledgers in front of him and his clouded eyes on the pages. The elders were along the table and Barış was by the wall and the wolf who called himself Halden was in the corner with two warriors on either side of him."Show me," I said.Orhan turned the ledger around.It was old and the leather was cracked and the pages were brown and brittle. It was a council ledger, the kind the elders kept of every meeting and every decision and every border dispute, and it went back fifty years.On the page in front of me there was a list of names and dates. And pressed into the paper at the bottom of the page, faded but unmistakable, there was a seal.The running wolf of Çamlıca with a small circle and a line through it. The seal of Fearchar."Fifty years," Orhan said. "I have been through every ledger in the chest. The seal is pressed into the paper every three or four years, always at the bottom of a page,