Chapter 20: Dawn on the Ridge

The circle was a ring of trampled grass at the top of the Ridge, with the sea going pink behind it.

The whole pack stood around the edge in a silence so thick I could hear the surf.

Ansel stripped to the waist and walked to the center without looking back.

The elder came from the other side, and I thought, he is enormous.

He had a head on him, and sixty years of fighting in his shoulders.

They changed together.

I had seen Ansel's wolf on the beach, playful and warm.

This one was black and huge, with gold eyes burning.

The elder's wolf was grey and heavier.

He hit Ansel before the shift had finished.

The sound went through my bones.

They went down in a tangle of teeth and fur, and when they came apart there was blood on Ansel's shoulder, bright against the black.

My hands flew to my mouth.

Emmett stood beside me, enormous and quiet, and Nolan on my other side.

"He's fine," Emmett said.

"He's bleeding!"

"He's letting him come," Nolan said. "Watch."

The elder charged again, and Ansel did not fight the charge.

He turned his shoulder and took the bite, and the grey jaws locked.

At the same instant I felt it in my chest, his plan, quiet and exact.

Now, it said.

He twisted, and the grey wolf's weight went past him, and he was on the elder's back with his teeth at the nape of his neck.

He held them there.

He did not bite.

The elder's flanks heaved under him, once, twice.

Then the grey wolf went limp and showed his throat.

A howl went up from the pack, one voice and then eighty, until the cliffs rang with it.

Ansel stepped back and shifted, naked and bloody, and stood over the old man with his chest heaving.

"Your Table's done with you," he said. "Leave the territory by sundown."

The elder lay on the grass and said nothing.

Then Cordelia screamed.

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