Chapter 10: The Ridge

Dorian's POV

I woke with her hair across my chest and a hundred torches burning outside.

My wolf came up fast, ready to kill.

Elowen was already at the window.

She stood there in my shirt, with her back to me, perfectly still.

I pulled on my trousers and went to stand at her shoulder.

The whole of Greyhollow ringed the ruins, two hundred wolves in the grey dawn.

Roderick sat his horse at the front, with the Ivorymoon sword on his belt.

Colm Radley stood at his stirrup.

Behind them, the old and the sick had come up the ridge on foot, and women held their children.

They had not come to fight.

They had come to watch.

"He called the pack," Elowen said. "He's going to do it here."

"Do what?"

"Make me kneel in front of my father's grave."

"No."

She glanced at me.

"No?"

"Not while I'm breathing."

"Dorian." She almost smiled. "I'm not a sword in a scabbard. You don't get to say."

I let that sit.

She was right.

She had told me so in the tent, and again at the graves, and I had thought I understood it.

I had not.

I understood it now, looking at her bare feet on the burned boards, and the way she held her chin.

"Then what do you want me to do?" I said.

"Stand beside me. And keep your hands off your blade."

"That is a hard order."

"It's the one I'm giving."

I buckled my belt.

We went out together.

Verity Crane stood at the lodge door with three Stormreach wolves.

She had a fresh bandage on her lip.

She did not look at me, and I kept my eyes forward.

Elowen walked down the slope with her hands loose at her sides, and she did not slow when the Greyhollow wolves began to mutter.

I followed one pace behind, as a second.

At the bottom of the hill, she stopped in front of Roderick's horse.

"Alpha," she said.

Roderick looked down.

I watched him.

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