Chapter 17: Silver on the Mountain Road

Corbin's POV

Six elders stood at my front gate in the gray before dawn, and the oldest of them took off his hat.

I told them in the gatehouse, standing, and it took six minutes.

I left out nothing but the sentence about my hand.

Nobody interrupted me.

When I finished, the oldest said, "Bernard called us to the Aldren mill at ten. He says he'll show us a leech."

"Then he'll show you what he showed the seven," I said.

"We want to hear you say it there. In front of him."

"I'll come."

"Alone, he said. He told us you would bring your hounds."

"Tell him I'll bring my truck."

Wynne caught my sleeve on the porch.

"Wait for her," she said. "She's in the shower. She'll want to come."

"She will."

"So wait."

I looked up at the window of my own room, where Larissa had slept with her braid across my pillow.

I knew what I should do.

I should wake her, and drive down the mountain with her hand in mine, and let two halves of a wolf walk into that mill together.

But she had told me not to decide for her.

So I did not decide for her.

I told Wynne to send her after me when she was dressed, and I got in my truck.

It was a forty-minute drive down the mountain road, through spruce and old burn, with the ditch deep on the right side.

A few miles from the lodge, a log truck stood sideways across the road.

I stopped.

I did not see the chain until I was already braking, a long gray line across the asphalt behind me that had not been there a minute ago.

Silver.

It had been laid down in a loop, and the loop had been closed.

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