Chapter 23: Her Choice

At noon the square was full again, and nobody had been told why.

They stood in front of the pack Stone in their winter coats, Council and benches and lone wolves.

Bettina held a loaf of bread under one arm.

Hugh stood by the mason.

Torin stood beside me, close, with his hands at his sides.

I had not told him a thing since dawn.

The mason waited with his chisel.

"Cut the name I give you first," I said. "Then mine, beside it."

I said my mother's name aloud, for the first time before the Council.

It was a plain name, and she had spent her life hiding it.

The mason bent to the grey slab, and the chisel rang.

The old woman from the lake took off her hat.

Then he cut mine beside it, deep and clean, over the scraped place where Cecily's had been.

ISLA GARROW, the Stone said, and nothing after it.

Nobody on that square could say it was the Luna's or the Alpha's. It was only mine.

I turned to face the pack.

"I'm not here to take a chair," I said. "I have a seat, and I'll sit in it when it matters."

I felt Torin go still beside me.

"I'm here to say something I should have said two years ago, in the dark.

"I'm saying it here, where you can hear."

I turned to him.

He was pale, and his eyes were gold and steady.

"Torin Ashdown," I said. "You told me nobody chooses a mate. You said to thank the Goddess for that."

"I did."

"I chose you at nineteen.

"I choose you again now, with my own mouth, in front of every wolf who watched you throw me away."

A sound went through the square.

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