Chapter 15: The Seventh Year

It took the healer and two sentries to hold Dane down.

The half-shift tore backward, bone by bone, until a man lay on the boards in a ruined shirt, gasping.

His eyes were open. They were as grey as slate, and they did not see anything.

The healer put two fingers to his throat and listened to his chest for a long time.

"He'll live," she said. "But I want every person in this hall to hear what I'm about to say."

The three visiting Alphas had come around the table. The Stonebrook council stood with them.

"The Alpha drank a heavy dose of moonroot," she said.

"Moonroot silences a wolf. It's a hard plant to find and a bad one to take for long."

"This man has been taking it in his tea for years. I smelled it in his sweat the first day the Prince arrived, and I didn't want to be right."

She turned and looked straight at Sydney.

"Whoever kept him on it knew his wolf was dying."

Sydney was on her knees at Dane's head with his hand in both of hers.

"I only wanted him comfortable," she said.

"Comfortable," said the eldest member of the council, an old woman with a cane of black wood.

She had sat on that council when my mother was alive. She came across the floor, one slow step at a time, and bent over Dane's face.

"Look at me, boy."

His eyes rolled to her.

"The wolf doesn't die of nothing. In my grandmother's day I saw it twice."

"A man refuses a true mate. The Moon lets him live seven years. His wolf dwindles, a little more every season, and then the seventh year comes."

She straightened.

"When did you meet the one you refused, Dane Callender?"