Chapter 9: The Run

Haakon didn't look up at the landing.

He looked at me.

"Go on up," he said. "He's not worth the stairs."

Rune laughed. "Freya's going to love this, Alpha. Her father and the leftovers, panting on the cliff like teenagers."

"Tell her," Haakon said, still looking at me. "Tell her tonight. Save me the trouble."

He came up the stairs past me then, slow, and Rune stopped smiling and got off the landing before Haakon reached it.

But Rune didn't tell Freya that night.

He kept it for whenever it would cut deepest.

Twelve days later came the half-moon run.

Kingsfall ran together two weeks before every mating.

All of it.

Four hundred wolves poured out of the hall at moonrise, down the cliff paths and into the shore woods.

The bride and groom ran at the front, and the pack ran the whole length of the territory till dawn.

"You're running," Solveig told me that afternoon. It wasn't a question.

"I'm not Kingsfall."

"So? Neither is the Greyfir groom, and he's running in front."

She jabbed a finger at my chest.

"You're not going to sit up here on the terrace like a widow. My son wants you there."

"Did he say that?"

"He doesn't have to say anything. He's been watching that door every time you walk through it for two weeks like a dog waiting for the mailman."

So I ran.

It was the first time I'd shifted since the rejection.

It hurt more than it should have, my wolf coming out stiff and slow.

Then my paws hit the cold moss at the bottom of the cliff.

The whole forest opened up around me in the dark, pine and lake and four hundred wolves, and I forgot about hurting.

Haakon's wolf ran at the head of the pack.

He was huge.

Dark gray, almost black, with a pale streak where the scar ran down his face.

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