Chapter 24: Cedar Fork Autumn

I stood on the porch in a borrowed pair of jeans and looked at my own name cut into stone.

"The Alliance gave us leave to take it," Trudy said. "We drove all night. Ramsay's pack carried it out of the Stonecrest graveyard themselves."

"Themselves?"

"They wanted to. A couple of them cried."

I came down the porch steps.

The granite was cold and rough, and the letters had been cut deep by a mason who had been paid well.

HAZEL HOGLUND. BELOVED.

Six years it had stood there.

Rowan came to my shoulder, and I felt him waiting.

"Is there a sledgehammer in that truck?" I said.

Trudy was already holding one out, handle first, with the biggest grin I had ever seen on her.

I took it.

I stepped up to the stone, planted my feet and swung with everything I had.

The first blow chipped the corner.

The second cracked the slab across the name.

The third broke it in half, and both halves fell off the tailgate and hit the dirt.

The pack roared.

Somebody whistled, and somebody else started clapping.

Soon every wolf in the clearing was cheering, and I stood there panting with the hammer on my shoulder.

"Where do you want the pieces?" Rowan asked.

I looked at the cabin, and the new door, and the old porch.

"Step," I said. "Right there at the foot of the stairs. Put the name face down."

He kissed my forehead.

Four men carried the halves over and set them in the dirt, and I walked across them in my bare feet.

The stone was cold, and I didn't mind.

Three weeks later the first snow came to Cedar Fork early.

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