Chapter 21: Rowan's POV: The Mill

Rowan's POV

I woke face down on the floor of my own hall with the taste of cloves in my mouth.

I had tasted the first pour, the host's duty, and swallowed only a mouthful.

Everyone else had drunk a full cup.

I got to my knees and the room swung.

Lark was not under my arm.

Morwen lay across the doorway with blood on her chin and her nails torn.

I put two fingers to her throat.

The pulse was slow and strong.

"Morwen," I said. "Morwen."

She didn't stir.

The midwife was sitting against a bench with her arm held at a bad angle.

"The truck went south," she said. "Two Kestrel enforcers and a woman in fur. And that boy."

"That boy with the brown eyes. He carried her out himself."

"Don't tell me where it hurts," I said. "Tell me if you can stand."

"I am eighty-one and I cracked a head with my cane before they took it," she said. "Go."

I went.

I called the new Kestrel Alpha from the truck with the phone jammed against my shoulder.

"Block the north den road," I told him. "Every wolf you can wake."

"They're already on it," he said. "Where are you going?"

"Where she isn't expected."

The Dowager was not a fool. The whole valley would look for her at the north den.

Her truck would take the river road south, to the old Silverthorn mill.

It was empty ground, owned by nobody, and it had a bridge.

I drove with the window down, and I smelled her fur collar before I saw the truck.

It was parked sideways in the mill yard with the doors open.