Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are based on the assumption of that all participants in the network cooperate and forward packets towards the destinations. However, due to the limited nature of the nodespsila resources, a node may decide not to cooperate to save its resources while still using the network. Such behavior of some nodes may degrade the whole network performance. To cope with such a situation, we propose a Stable path, Low overhead, Truthful, and Cost efficient (SLTC) routing protocol which stimulates nodes to cooperate. SLTC utilizes the game theoretic notion of mechanism design. To the best of our knowledge, SLTC is the first protocol attaining the message complexity of O(nd), where n is the number of nodes, and d is the network diameter. The best previously proposed approaches in this area has the message complexity of O(n2 log n). In addition, SLTC considers path stability in order to deal with the mobility of the nodes in a better way.