Chapter 12: Surety

The hall went so quiet I could hear the clock over the door.

Then Damien laughed.

"She can't put up the ridge. The ridge belongs to the pack. She signed it over in June."

"I didn't sign anything."

"There's a deed with your name on it."

"There's a deed with somebody's handwriting on it."

Iris looked down at her lap.

The eldest elder tapped her cane once on the floor.

"Then the deed is disputed," she said. "And the council can settle that too, while it's at it."

The elder in the bolo tie frowned at her.

"That's not how we..."

"It's exactly how we. Read your own book."

He shut his mouth.

The eldest elder turned to Damien.

"The girl offers the ridge. If the exile runs before the full moon in September, she signs it over in front of this table."

"With her own hand. No dispute. No deed. The ridge is yours, Alpha."

Damien went very still.

I watched him do the math.

A real signature. In front of seven elders. No forger, no question, nothing any council could ever undo.

All he needed was for Abel to run.

And every wolf in that room was sure that a packless exile facing two months and a council would run.

"Agreed," Damien said, smiling.

"If he stays," I said, "the ridge is mine until the council rules."

"Nobody sets foot on it without my say. Not you. Not your surveyor."

"He won't stay."

"Then you've got nothing to lose by agreeing."

His smile went a little stiff.

"Agreed."

The elder in the bolo tie wrote it out on a sheet of pack letterhead, grumbling.

He slid it across the table to me with a pen.

I bent and signed it, slowly, so every elder at that table could watch my hand.

Faye Dacre.

The bar of the F swept straight through the tail of the y, one hard stroke.

The eldest elder leaned over to look.

She didn't say anything.

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