Chapter 16: The Ledger

Torin's POV

They locked me in my own study with the lamp lit and a tray of food I didn't touch.

Two guards stood outside the door. I could hear them breathing.

I sat at my father's desk and looked at my left hand.

Gunnar had refused to let anyone look at my scar. He had refused it fast, and in public, and he had never done anything fast in his life.

I took off the glove and held the wrist under the lamp.

Nothing. White teeth marks, healed clean.

Then, at nine o'clock, a pebble hit the window.

I opened it. Anders was crouched in the snow below with a coil of rope and a grin that didn't reach his eyes.

"Some Beta," I said.

"Some Alpha. Get down here."

"The door's guarded."

"The window isn't. Gunnar's at the Council supper in the hall with every elder and half the pack. His rooms in the west wing are empty."

I went out the window.

My boots hit the snow, and my brother looked at me in the dark.

"Torin," he said. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I didn't know what I was telling."

"You could have said, 'I woke up and I don't remember.'"

"I did say it. To Gunnar. He said I'd never had a head for wine."

Anders swore softly, and we went round the back of the lodge.

My uncle's rooms are at the end of the west hall, three doors from the guest room where I woke two years ago.

I had never gone in without knocking.

The door was locked. I broke the frame with my shoulder.

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