Chapter 13: Tobin First

We rode back to the pack-house with the drawing folded inside his coat.

I did not speak the whole way.

I was not calm.

I had only put the anger somewhere I could reach it later.

In the study Anselm lit every lamp and poured three cups of plum brandy.

Nobody drank.

The drawing lay flat on the desk between us.

Nobody could look at it, and nobody could look away.

"It isn't a message," Anselm said. "It's a leash."

"I know what it is," Matvei said.

"She wants you to ride to Lark tonight, alone, in a fury."

"Yes."

"And you want to."

"Yes."

"Sit down," I said.

Both men looked at me.

I put my palms on the desk.

My hand still stung from his face.

"The oath," I said. "Say it back to me. The part about the snow."

Matvei looked at me and not at Anselm.

"The mother bears the child and goes free at the first snow after the birth," he said. "The child stays with the Alpha's line."

"That clause is dead."

"Sorrel."

"Dead. Hear me out."

I kept my voice level, and it cost me.

"Tobin comes out of House Lark first," I said. "Before the birth, before the snow, before anything is signed again."

"And then?" Anselm asked quietly.

"Then I decide what to do with my freedom, and I decide it with him in the room."

"And the child you carry?"

"Stays where I stay. Nobody takes anything from me and calls it the Alpha's line."

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