Chapter 24: Highridge Point

I said, "Ask me on the ridge."

So we climbed it, the two of us and the old dog, in the grey before dawn.

It was the same trail I had walked alone once, with a phone in my pocket that never rang.

This time my feet knew the way, and I wasn't running from anything.

Kellan climbed beside me and said nothing, and when I slipped on a wet root his hand was under my elbow before I had finished slipping.

We came over the last rise onto the bare granite, and the whole sky was open.

The Point lay cold and pale under it, with the five stones black in their ring.

Below the ridge, on the far side of the circle, the four had gathered.

The fire pit was lit.

It burned steady and gold, and Emmett stood in the fifth gap with his back against the stone and his chin up.

He had said yes, and he had been asked.

Dane stood at the second stone with his hands open at his sides.

The cousins stood at theirs.

None of them looked toward the ridge.

Then Dane did.

I felt him before I saw him, a thin gold pull at the edge of my own wolf, shy and sorry and weak.