Chapter 12: The Wolves of Bloodwood

Nobody in the hall said anything.

The apprentice's letter hung in her hand.

On the left side of the benches, a group of twelve wolves in dark red cloaks had sat quietly all morning.

They were the delegation from Bloodwood, sent each year to witness the council because Perrin sat as their regent.

The oldest of them was a stooped man with a white beard and a limp.

He stood up slowly.

He walked out of the benches and into the ring of grey stone, and he stopped in front of me.

I saw that his eyes were wet.

"You have her face," he said. "Your mother's face. I carried her cradle on my back when I was a boy."

"I don't remember her," I said.

"She asked us to wait for you."

Then the old man went down onto both knees on the stone, and he put his forehead to the floor at my feet.

"Alpha," he said.

I could not breathe.

Behind him, the other eleven Bloodwood wolves stood up together.

They crossed the floor in a line, their red cloaks sweeping the stone, and one by one they knelt.

"Alpha," they said, each in turn.

Three hundred Stormbrook wolves watched in a dead silence.

"Mama," said the smallest girl, in an awed whisper. "They're kneeling to you."

"I see that," I said faintly.

A hand came into mine.

It was Lucan's.

He had risen from the floor with a child on each arm, and he stood beside me with his eyes on the old man.

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