Chapter 28 The Cost of Kneeling
Everett POV
The hall shifted around me, and I stayed on my knees.
I could have stood. The floor bit into my kneecaps and my strapped arm ached from the position, but I was kneeling where I’d watched Liza stand while I used my new authority to shame her before the pack, and I wasn’t finished yet.
Cold air still pushed through the hall, guttering the fire at the far end and carrying the smell of exhaust from whatever vehicles Kurt and his people had taken. Eleven wolves had gone with him.
Well over a hundred wolves remained. Some stood near the kitchen corridor where Rosa had been.
Others clustered near the dying fireplace at the hall’s east end, talking in low voices that stopped whenever I moved.
A few had already slipped out through the main entrance, unwilling to follow Kurt or stay to watch what happened next.
I got up. The sickness had weakened my legs, and one arm bound against my chest threw off my balance. When I straightened, I locked my jaw against the nausea and waited it out.
Nobody helped me.
That was fair.
An enforcer named Wendell Dimond stood near the platform with his arms crossed, looking at me as if I were a dog that had bitten someone and hadn’t been put down yet.
Wendell had worked East Valley’s northern boundary for years.
He was a solid wolf, never political, the kind of man who did his job, went home, and stayed out of lodge drama.
“You just handed Kurt the pack,” Wendell said. “You knelt to a wolf who walked out of this pack and admitted you failed her in front of everyone. How are you supposed to remain Alpha after that?”
“I told the valley the truth,” I said. “If that costs me the pack, the truth still stands.”
Wendell stared at me. Whatever he saw, he didn’t like it much. But he didn’t leave.
A woman near the kitchen doorway turned her back and walked deeper into the corridor.
Two younger wolves followed her. Near the ceremonial table, an older man I’d known since I was a boy sat with his hands on his knees, studying the floor.
He’d watched my father lead this pack for decades. Now he watched the floor instead of me.
I could feel them calculating. Their quiet judgment was worse than anger. They were measuring what I was worth and coming up short.
“Anyone who needs to go home tonight, go,” I said. My voice carried, though the hall had thinned and the words echoed off the beams in a way they hadn’t when the room was full. “Nobody gets punished for not wanting to look at me right now. I earned that.”
Wendell’s jaw tightened. He exchanged a glance with a gray-haired woman beside him, someone from the eastern patrol rotation whose name I should have known and didn’t.
“Hold the lodge tonight,” I said. “Keep everyone off the river until I send word. Kurt took wolves who know the boundary, and some of them know the crossing schedule. If anyone sees his people near the fence or the bridge, you pull back and radio. You don’t engage.”
“And where will you be?” Wendell asked.
“West Valley.”
The room went still.
“You’re leaving again,” Wendell said.
“Kurt took eleven fighters who are angry enough to do something stupid tonight.” I kept my voice level. “The first thing he’ll do is go after the woman he’s been using as his excuse for six weeks. That means he’s heading for West territory, and Liza Mallory is the target.”
“So let the West Alpha protect her. That’s his job now, isn’t it?”
“It’s mine too.”
Wendell shook his head. He’d watched his Alpha kneel on the floor and confess to mistaking vanity for leadership. Now that Alpha was walking back across the river to sleep under another pack’s roof.
“You come back,” Wendell said, his tone making it an order.
“I’ll come back.”
He held my gaze for another beat, then turned to the woman beside him and started organizing the lodge watch. The conversation moved past me, and I let it.
I walked toward the main doors. The timber floor creaked under my boots the same way it had the night Liza walked out. Tonight, the room barely noticed me leaving.
Outside, hard moonlight lay over the valley. The snow threw it back in every direction, and the pines stood black against the silver ground. My breath clouded in the still air, and the cold cut into me.
Shane’s truck sat near the bottom of the lodge steps, engine running, headlights throwing two bright lines across the churned snow of the yard. I could see Dominic’s silhouette in the passenger seat and Shane behind the wheel. They were waiting for Liza.
Liza stood on the second step.
She hadn’t raised her collar or loosened her black hair after leaving the hall. Shane’s mark and the scar I’d called a distraction remained fully visible in the moonlight.
I stopped on the top step. She was below me, looking up, and I waited for her to tell me no again.
“You told the truth in there,” she said.
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t fix anything.”
“I know.”
She studied me. I stood still and let her look.
“But you did it the right way,” she said. “On that floor. In front of those people. You let them see what it cost you.”
I didn’t answer, because she wasn’t asking.
“It gives you nothing.” Her voice was even, the way it always was when she was saying something that mattered. “I haven’t forgiven you, and I’m not promising you anything. But you answered for what you did, and I’m not going to pretend you didn’t.”
“Okay,” I said.
She came up one step. We were close enough that I could smell her, and the deeper notes of Dominic and Shane woven through her. Their scents on her still hurt, but I’d made my peace with the pain, and relief ran beneath it.
Liza raised her hand and touched my cheek.
The contact went through me quietly, nothing like the violent recognition flash from the night of my ascension.
Her palm was warm and rough from patrol work, and where her skin met mine, the sickness eased.
The nausea I’d carried for weeks receded.
My lungs opened. I drew a full breath for the first time in days, deep and clean, and kept it without clenching against the urge to vomit.
I kept my hands at my sides.
Her dark blue eyes held mine, and through the old bond, I felt the limits of what she was giving me. Acknowledgment.
She dropped her hand. The sickness crept back immediately, duller than before but still there, waiting. The brief respite only made the return worse.
“Kurt’s out there,” I said.
“I know.”
“He’ll come for you first. You’re the symbol he’s been using. If he can take you or hurt you or prove that Dominic can’t keep you safe, he wins the argument he’s been making for six weeks.”
“I’m aware of what I am to Kurt.” She’d grown up watching him and knew him better than I ever had.
“I’m coming back to West Valley,” I said. “Leaving you exposed while Kurt is running with eleven angry wolves is the one thing I can’t do tonight.”
Her expression didn’t change. “You’re leaving your own lodge.”
“I left it once before, and for worse reasons.”
She looked at the truck, at Dominic’s shape in the passenger seat, at Shane’s hands on the wheel. Then back at me.
“Get in,” she said.
? ? ?
Dominic rode up front, his wounded left side braced against the seat, his eyes on the mirrors.
I sat in the back seat behind Shane, and Liza took the middle, close enough for the old bond to pull at me while the scents of her two mates filled the cab.
She sat upright with her hands in her lap and watched the road ahead.
Nobody spoke for the first mile.
The lodge road wound through black pines under the full moon, and the shadows fell across the windshield in bars.
I watched the side mirror and saw headlights appear behind us before we reached the main road.
They stayed distant, following at the speed of someone who wanted to be seen without coming close enough to challenge us.
“We’ve got a tail,” Shane said.
Dominic adjusted the mirror on his side. “Two vehicles. Keeping their distance.”
“Kurt’s?” Liza asked.
“Could be any of them,” I said. “He took enough wolves to fill three trucks.”
Shane’s hands tightened on the wheel. “Are they following us to the bridge?”
“They’re following us to the bridge,” I said. “They want to watch me cross. Kurt’s telling the rest of the pack the same story he told the hall. Their Alpha is leaving East territory to sleep under the West Alpha’s roof. Again.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” Shane met my eyes in the rearview mirror.
“That’s exactly what I’m doing.”
The headlights held their distance. Two sets, bright and steady, tracking us through every turn.
The river bridge appeared ahead, old concrete under white moonlight. The approach was empty, with no trucks blocking it and no enforcers standing in the cold. Craig had cleared the way, or Kurt hadn’t bothered to hold a crossing he’d already conceded.
Shane slowed at the approach. Dominic’s hand settled on the door handle.
“Go,” Dominic said.
Shane took the bridge at speed. The tires hit the concrete and the truck lurched over the expansion joint, and then we were across, the ice creaking somewhere below us, and the headlights behind us stopped.
I turned in the seat and watched them through the rear window. Two trucks were parked at the East bridgehead, high beams flooding the bridge approach.
“They’re staying on their side,” Liza said.
“They got what they came for.” I faced forward again. “Kurt’s people watched me leave.”
Dominic glanced back at me with the cool attention he gave a temporary ally. “He’ll use it.”
“Yes.”
Liza sat between us with her hands in her lap. She didn’t reach for me. The relief from her touch had faded, and the nausea had returned, but I could keep my stomach. That was enough for the drive.
The truck carried us deeper into West territory while Kurt remained loose behind us.