Chapter 39. The One That Got Away

Josie's POV

The second time in my life that I carried bread into a royal hall I'd been told to stay out of, I wasn't fired first. I'd been summoned. It turned out to feel almost exactly the same.

The great hall of Ashford Court had been dressed for the Harvest: sheaves of wheat tied to every pillar, candles in iron crowns, long tables down both sides packed with two hundred Alphas and their mates in their best, and a smell of beeswax and roast meat and wolves so thick I could have cut it.

At the far end, under the window where the moon would rise, the high table. The king in the center. The queen beside him, pale and still. Hugh Marsh on his right hand, in his chain, smiling at everyone.

And at the end of the high table, his hands flat on the cloth the way they'd been the night in Cedar Run, Weston.