Chapter 9: Someone Like That

The pack hall held two hundred wolves at noon, and every one of them stood with their eyes on the floor in front of the Alpha's dais.

I stood in the middle of that floor with Poppy's hand in mine.

Hester had taken her cat scrubs off at last and sat in the front row with her arms folded and her jaw set.

Twelve council members sat along the dais. Alpha Whitcombe stood at the speaker's post with a paper in his hand.

Corbin stood at the head of the table.

He hadn't slept. He had changed his shirt and had not looked at me once since the steps.

"A pup born of an unsevered bond belongs to the Alpha's line," Alpha Whitcombe said. "It has been law in this territory for two hundred years."

"The mother may remain as nurse," he went on, "if she behaves."

The hall murmured.

I felt my fingers tighten around my daughter's.

"Dr. Roarke," said one of the council women, not unkindly. "Do you have anything to say?"

"I do."

I let go of Poppy's hand and told her to sit with Hester. She went, trailing a stuffed rabbit by one ear.

Then I walked to the speaker's post and Alpha Whitcombe stepped aside, still smiling.

"Five years ago I stood in a clinic," I said. "I was holding a prescription for prenatal vitamins."

"In the next room, your Alpha was telling a man in this hall that I would never leave."

Every head in the room lifted.

"When I walked in, the man who owns this pack looked me in the eye and said, 'I don't know her. Why would I know someone like that.'"

A woman near the back gasped aloud.

"I have been 'someone like that' for four years," I said. "I had a room. I had a door. I did not have a name in this house."

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