Ch. my pack erased me, the lycan king didn’t 8 my pack erased me, the lycan king didn’t 8

Chapter 8 

+45 Coins 

Alpha Rowan Greer is seventy–eight, built like a bear that’s been dying angrily for ten years. Alpha Edmund Holloway is eighty–one, thin as wire, with a cane he doesn’t need. 

“They sent a pup,” Greer growled. 

“They sent the King’s Head Warden. First question. Why do you want this mine?” 

He opened his mouth to bark something about his father’s honor. 

I wasn’t listening to his mouth. I was watching his eyes. 

They flicked once to the iron door deep in the tunnel. And stayed there. 

I turned to Holloway. 

“Second question. What’s behind that door?” 

The old wolf’s cane hit the rock. 

Both of them stopped breathing at the same moment. Sixty wolves shifted, confused, waiting for orders that didn’t 

come. 

“Nobody’s mined here in forty years,” I said. “You’ve spent two years making sure the other one never gets the key. You 

don’t want this mine. You want it shut.” 

“There’s nothing in there,” Greer snapped. 

“Then you won’t mind if I open it.” 

Holloway sat down slowly on a rock and put his face in his hands. 

It took forty minutes and a flask of Greer’s whiskey. I sent everyone back thirty yards so two old wolves could stop 

pretending. 

In 1983, a girl ran into that mine. 

Twenty years old. A white wolf. Her father had given her to the Morrow coven, the oldest vampire family in the north, to pay a debt. She escaped after a year of hell and hid in the silver mine, because silver hides a wolf’s scent and she 

thought nobody could find her there. 

Greer and Holloway found her first. 

Chapter 8 

And both of their packs owed blood money to the same vampires. 

So they made a phone call, 

“We thought they’d take her back,” Holloway whispered. “A locked room. We didn’t know.” 

+45 Coins 

“She never walked out of that back tunnel,” Greer said, his voice gone to gravel. “We sealed it ourselves. Swore we’d never open it. Every year since, I’ve been terrified that crazy old man would dig her up and tell the world.” 

“Every year,” Holloway said, “I’ve been terrified of the same thing.” 

Forty years of war. Over a grave. 

“Whose daughter was she?” 

“Doesn’t matter,” Greer said. “She’s been dead forty years.” 

“Whose daughter.” 

“They never told us the pack,” Holloway said. 

Lie. His thumb rubbed his cane twice. The same tell my father has. 

I kept my face still. I’d had a year of practice keeping my face still while my chest caved in. 

“Here’s your answer. You both sign Hollow Ridge over to the Crown. Forever. Neither pack owns it. Neither can dig. The 

King posts a guard. You stop paying sixty wolves to stand in the snow. And you both start sleeping.” 

Silence. 

“And you put her name on a stone,” I said. “Whoever she was. She was somebody’s girl before she was your problem.” 

Greer broke first. “Fine. God forgive me. Fine.” 

They signed on the hood of my car at ten p.m. Holloway’s hands shook so badly Jonah had to hold the paper. 

As he was leaving, the old Alpha stopped in front of me and stared at my face for a long, long time. 

“Forgive an old man,” he said. “You have her eyes. Silver at the edges. Moon–blessed.” 

The world tipped sideways. 

“Whose eyes?” 

“Rose’s.” His voice cracked. “Rose Ashford. The girl in the tunnel. Your father’s big sister.” 

Chapter 8 

I couldn’t breathe. 

+45 Coins 

My father has no sister. My father has never once said the name Rose. 

“You’re Gideon’s girl,” Holloway whispered. “The whole Council knows it now. Which means the Morrows will know it 

by morning.” 

“Why would vampires care about me?” 

His bony hand closed on my arm. 

“Because they never got what they paid for. The old Lord is dead. His son Casimir is worse. Go home, child. Get behind your father’s wards.” 

“I don’t have a father,” I said. 

I got in the car. 

I ended a two–year war in ninety–four minutes. Kael called it the fastest treaty in Council history. My team was 

insufferable the whole drive back. 

I didn’t hear a word. 

A girl with my eyes. Sold to vampires. Buried in silver. 

And a family that went silent the morning after my twenty–first birthday. 

We got back to the Hall at midnight. 

Before I’d left that morning, I’d pressed a single strand of my hair across the gap between my door and the frame. An 

old habit from a year of sneaking through my own house. 

The hair was gone. 

My door was unlocked. 

And my room smelled like something no wolf should ever smell inside the King’s Hall. 

Cold. Sweet. Dead.