Chapter 7: The Elders' Vote

"My wolf has said that word since the gate," Torin said.

He said it into my hair, in the dark, with his arm heavy across my ribs.

"You could hear him?"

"Not him. You." He pulled back to look at me. "A wolfless woman can't hear a mate's wolf. Nobody can."

"But I did."

"You did."

"So I'm not what they told me," I said.

"You never were."

The fire had burned down to red.

Neither of us said the thing we were both thinking, which was that in a few hours eleven old wolves would try to give me back.

At dawn Torvi knocked on the tower door with the flat of a sword.

"Get dressed," she called. "Vote's at noon, and so is Osric."

The council hall was a long room with a plain oak table and no windows.

Eleven elders sat along it on benches worn smooth, grey-bearded men and a few stern women, with Torvi at the foot as Beta.

Torin sat at the head.

I stood behind his chair with the ledger, because that was where Torvi had told me to stand.

Osric and Lorna sat at the far end as guests of the council.

Lorna had brought her basket.

Osric met my eyes and smiled, and I looked at the wall behind him.

"We'll begin," said the white-bearded elder from the great hall. "Alpha Reave, you have the floor."

"I have nothing to say," said Torin. "Rhona Tarn does."

A rustle ran down the benches.

I stepped out from behind his chair, and my knees went unsteady for a moment.

Then I felt his pulse in my ribs, slow and calm, and I opened the book.

"Six years ago, Mirefold's widow and orphan fund held fifteen thousand silver marks," I said. "Today it holds less than a third."

"Here is where it went."

I laid out Torvi's bills of sale in a row down the table.

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