Chapter 14: Both

Gilbert walked to the stone slowly, with his jaw tight.

Imogen stepped off it and passed him without a glance.

He stood where she had stood.

I had watched that man walk into a hundred rooms, and in every one of them he had known where to put his hands.

Now he didn't.

"Gilbert Thatcher," the eldest said. "On the stone. Did you know Della Brennan was a wolf when you married her?"

He looked at his father.

The old man looked at his cane.

"No," Gilbert said.

His voice came out clear and steady, and for one second I thought the stone had failed.

Then the lamp over the table guttered, and a wolf near the door growled under his breath.

I saw that Gilbert's hands had begun to shake.

"I didn't know," he said. "I loved her. I thought she was a human with a family herb garden."

He swallowed.

"The tea was chamomile. My father pushed me, but I never knew what she was."

"Is that your word?"

"It is."

The eldest nodded slowly and let it stand.

"Imogen Hess," she said. "You have an item for this council?"

Imogen walked back up with the black recorder in both hands.

She set it on the long table in front of the five elders and pressed the button.

The hiss filled the barn.

Then a young man's voice, quick and pleased with himself.

"Dad. I have news."

Nobody breathed.

I watched the tape do its work on the faces around me.

I watched it in the wolves along the walls, and in the women who had hugged me at pack picnics.

The old man's chair had gone very still.

"Dad, she's a wolf. I shook her hand and smelled it right through her."

Gilbert stood on the stone and listened to himself.

"Keep the tea going," said the voice on the tape. "She'll never leave me. She can't even feel a mate."

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