Chapter 6: The Vardy House

Garth found me over his sister's shoulder.

Two hundred yards of gravel between us, and a crowd, and he found me anyway.

He smiled.

Then he lifted the gloved hand and tapped two fingers to his brow.

The youngest grabbed a fistful of my coat at the back.

I didn't move.

"Who's that?" Cale asked beside me.

"Your uncle," I said.

"I know who he is. Why's she holding on to you like that?"

I didn't answer.

I turned to the squad.

"Pick up your gear," I said. "We're not sleeping in a kennel."

"Where are we sleeping?" asked the right twin.

"My father's house."

We walked out the back of the barn and down through the orchard, away from the horns.

Cale didn't follow.

I didn't look to see if he wanted to.

The Vardy house sat at the far edge of the valley, where the river bent and the pines came down to the water.

Nobody had lived in it for fifteen years.

The porch had fallen in on one end.

A young pine was growing through the kitchen window.

Half the roof was gone, and the rest was green with moss.

The squad stood in the yard and looked at it in the last of the light.

"Well," said the cook. "It's got a chimney."

"It's got a tree," said the left twin.

"Trees are free firewood," said Edda. "Brothers, get the axe."

We slept that night on the floor of the one room with a whole ceiling, eleven wolves in a heap like a litter.

It was the best sleep I'd had in two years.

At noon the next day we walked up to the round hall in our garrison coats and stood at the back for the rite.

Alder looked gray.

He had to sit for most of it.

Cale knelt on the moon stone in front of the whole pack.

His father put the acting Alpha's ring on his right hand, next to the oath ring on his left.

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