Chapter 28. The Half He Didn't Write

June's POV

Ronan told them everything.

He didn't make a speech of it. He didn't plead. He said it the way he said everything that mattered, low and plain and without decoration, standing beside me in the middle of the floor with his bad arm hanging at his side.

The clean hands. Not a scratch on them. Nothing under the nails.

The wounds. Wide. Too wide for any ten-year-old's paw.

"I noticed both," he said. "I was twenty. I'd been sick in the reeds. The Alpha standing over the bodies was certain, and the Council was certain, and I wanted to go home." He paused. "So I wrote down what my nose told me and left out what my eyes did. And this panel signed a child's life away on my half a truth."

Nobody in the hall made a sound.

"I'm not asking you to forgive that," Ronan said. "I'm asking you to put it in the record. Next to the other thing I said. So whoeve