Chapter 9: Gold

The silence changed.

It did not break.

It thickened, and pressed down on the room until every sound went out of it.

The enforcer on my left was reaching for my arm with a silver cuff open in his hand.

His eyes met mine for the first time in ten years.

He dropped to his knees on the boards.

The cuff clattered out of his fingers.

The man on my right went down next, and then the other two, all four in a ragged row with their foreheads touching the floor.

I did not understand it.

I did not understand why my own breath sounded so loud.

Then I felt it, a deep, bright pull behind my ribs, and I knew it was Briar and knew she was not afraid.

All along the walls, wolves were going down.

They went in waves, row after row, the visiting packs and the Ashmoor men and women and the children on their mothers' hips.

Every head bowed.

Even the Alphas rose out of their tall chairs, one after another, and sank slowly to one knee.

The old Alpha of the northern pack, white beard and all, put his palm flat on the floor.

I saw the last chair on the arc.

Bram stood in front of it with his jaw locked and his hands clenched at his sides, fighting.

I could see how hard he was fighting.

The muscles stood out in his neck.

His knee bent anyway.

His eyes closed, and his other knee hit the boards, and the Alpha of Ashmoor knelt in front of the whole Alliance with his head down.

"Larkin," breathed the old man in the white beard.

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