Shattered Sanctuary: The First Luna's Severance novel · Chapter 14 of 24
Chapter 14: Ironridge
"Not tonight," Rosalind said.
The old she-wolf's face did not change.
"I'm not saying no," Rosalind said, to her and to the whole ring. "I'm saying nobody should ask a woman for a pack an hour after she tore her own heart out in front of it."
A low sound went around the court, half laughter and half something rawer.
"Edmund holds Echo Hall until I answer," she said. "The Gathering goes on. Nobody touches him."
She looked at Dalton, who was sitting on the cobbles with his arm in his lap.
"Nobody touches him either."
Then she put the circlet into Agnes's hands.
"Keep it warm for me."
She went to the cottage behind the clinic and took her mother's quilt off the back of the chair.
When she came out, the she-wolves of Echo Hall had lined both sides of the gravel path.
There were two hundred of them, maybe more, the ones from the clinic and the pup school and the north cabins.
The young mother from the birth stood near the end with her baby in a sling.
Nobody spoke.
The old she-wolf at the head of the line lowered her head, and the rest of them did the same, one after another, down the whole length of the path.
Rosalind walked between them with the quilt over her arm.
At the iron gate a black truck waited with its engine off.
Hamish leaned against the door with his hands in his pockets.
He didn't say a word.
She climbed in, and he drove.
They crossed the river on the rusted bridge, and she watched Echo Hall's lights shrink in the mirror until the pines swallowed them.
"You can have my house," he said at last. "Or the cabin. Or the road to anywhere you like."
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