Chapter 5: Guest

The Greywater pack voted on me the next morning, in the long room of the lodge.

I sat on a bench by the fire in Sinead's second-best coat with my bandaged hands in my lap.

Ninety wolves packed the room, standing along the walls.

Bram stood at the head of the room with his arms crossed and let them argue.

"She's Ironbark's," said an old man near the door. "Ironbark's problem, Ironbark's blood. Send her home before Garrick sends his enforcers."

"She nearly died on our ice," said a woman beside him.

"She nearly died on their ground. We don't know what she did."

"She rejected the Alpha before the whole pack," said someone else. "That's not a small thing."

"It's not a small thing to put a labouring woman in a frost cell either," Sinead said from the kitchen door, with a ladle in her hand.

A murmur went through the room.

"Is that true?" the old man asked.

Everyone looked at me.

I stood up.

"It's true," I said. "I'm Rhea MacTavish, and until two nights ago I was Garrick Wycliffe's mate."

The room went quiet.

"He put me in the frost cell while I was in labour," I said. "Two hundred wolves watched him do it."

Nobody said anything.

"They say my pup is in the ground on their hill. I mean to open that grave and see."

A woman near the stove put her hand over her mouth.

"You think they lied to you?" the old man said.

"I think nobody has shown me his face."

My voice held steady until the last word.

"I rejected Garrick before they put me in there. The pack banished me anyway. I walked across your river because it was the only way left to go."