Chapter 4: Moon Court

I woke before dawn with my cheek on the cold side of the pillow.

Torin was asleep next to me, one arm flung across my waist.

I lifted it off.

I sat on the edge of the bed and put my hand on my chest.

Nothing hurt.

It was worse than hurting.

Something that had been dragging at me for months was gone, and what it left behind was a hole the size of a fist.

I looked back at him.

His color was high and his breath was deep.

I had watched him sleep gray and sweating for two years, and now he looked like a man who'd run a mountain.

I thought about the hook in my chest.

Then I got dressed in the dark, in black jeans and the plainest sweater I owned.

I left the wedding ring on the dresser, on top of the contract.

The Moon Court met on the stone at the center of Redfern land.

It was a flat grey slab as wide as a truck, in a ring of old pines.

A hundred years of names were scratched into its edge.

Anyone could call a Court at moonrise if a wolf stood on the stone and spoke.

Hester drove me up in her pickup with the heater rattling.

"You don't have to do this tonight," she said.

"I won't be better tomorrow."

"You could wait for the Solstice."

"I could wait for the specialist in Missoula, too."

She patted my knee twice.

"Then I'll stand where you can see me."

By the time the moon cleared the ridge, three hundred wolves had come up the trail.

Word moves fast in a valley that small.

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