Chapter 12: Not Mine

My mother stood in the snow with every eye in the pack on her.

She looked at the old woman.

She looked at Alaric, sitting up on the steps with his color back.

Then she looked at me, for what I think was the first time in my life.

"You were three weeks old," she said.

Her voice was flat and dull. It was the voice of a woman reading off a list.

"It was the winter of the hunters' raid, the one the old Alpha died in."

"His mate died the same night. Everyone thought the baby died with them."

"I found you under the porch of the Alpha's house, wrapped in a hunting coat."

"You had grey eyes. Silver, in the dark."

Nobody in the yard made a sound.

"What baby?" I said.

"I was the Alpha's nurse. I had a daughter of three."

"I was twenty-seven, and I had nothing. No mate, no rank, no family on this land."

"The old Alpha's line was silver. The seat belongs to it by blood, not by council vote."

"If anyone had known you lived, you would have been Alpha by the time you were grown."

"And the seat would have been yours, not mine, not hers, not anyone's we knew."

"So you kept me," I said.

"I kept you alive. I did that part right."

"You chained me up."

"A silver wolf wakes under the full moon at twelve. I couldn't let you wake."

She said it to the snow.

"The cellar kept it down. The hat, the stories about the runt, the others thinking you weak. All of it kept you small."

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