Chapter 4: The Notes

The council met at noon in the pack hall, and the whole pack came to watch.

Osric had told me one thing on the walk down from the meadow.

"Say nothing about what you are," he said. "Not to the council, not to anyone. Not until I understand it."

So I sat at the long table in a borrowed sweater with my hair still damp, and I said nothing.

Five council members faced me across the wood.

Osric sat at the end with his hands folded on his stick.

Lucan stood alone by the window.

He had changed his shirt, and he had not looked at me since I walked in.

"The question is simple," said the eldest of the five women, who had run the council for thirty years. "Does the release hold?"

"The moon took it," Osric said.

"The moon takes what it's handed. The law wants an Alpha's seal."

"Then ask the Alpha for his seal," a man at the end said.

Everyone looked at Lucan.

"I won't sign it," Lucan said.

A murmur ran through the benches.

"Then the Luna abandoned the ring," the woman said, "and we need to hear why."

I opened my mouth, and a soft voice cut in from the back.

"May I speak?" Ilse said.

She had come in late, in a clean apron, with her satchel in her lap and red around her eyes.

The council nodded.

She stood, and the whole room turned to her.

"I have been a friend to Dessa for six years," she said. "I don't want to hurt her. But I think the council has to see something."

She walked to the table and set down a small stack of folded papers.

Six of them.

I knew them by their edges.

"Lucan gave me these at the clinic last night, before he went after her," Ilse said. "He took the seventh with him."

Lucan's head came up.

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