Chapter 24: Founders' Night, Again

A year later, the Ridgeline lodge hall was streaming Founders' Night again.

Four hundred wolves from three packs sat at the long tables, in dark suits and good dresses and a few borrowed coats.

Table one had been set that afternoon, with flowers.

I had done the place cards myself, and I had left one seat at the end empty on purpose.

"You're shaking," Rodrick said, behind me.

He was fixing the clasp at the back of my dress.

"I'm not."

"You are a little. I'm allowed to say it. I own a quarter of you."

"Of the company."

"Of the brand," he said. "The emotional parts are shared."

He kissed the top of my head and went to his seat.

At eight o'clock the thin elder stepped up to the microphone.

The hall went quiet, table by table.

"Every alpha of Ridgeline has stood here and named his Luna," she said.

"This year the pack has voted to change the custom."

She stepped aside.

"The Warden will say the name."

I walked up the middle aisle.

The silver ridge pin lay on the edge of the podium, on a folded white cloth.

It was the place where I had left it a year before.

Rafe must have kept it all this time.

He sat at the front table in a dark suit, with his hands loose on the cloth in front of him.