Chapter 18: The Rite

I knew whose ankles they were.

I'd hemmed that skirt to the exact inch above them.

Tressa pulled her hood down lower and took her place in the circle, three robes from me, without looking my way.

On the far side, Clement stood at the Beta's place with his hood back and his silver hair blowing.

Up on the bluff, at the gate where the lake road ends, a car sat with its engine running.

Duluth plates. Headlights off.

The man who wanted to sign at eight was waiting for morning.

The moon cleared the water.

Cador walked into the middle of the circle.

He wore the robe I'd cut for him the night of the cutting table, to measurements I'd taken with my knuckles on his heart.

He let it fall onto the sand.

The pack went quiet.

The wolf stood where he had been, with the lake behind him.

Under my ribs, against the shut door, the thread pulled tight.

The wolf turned toward the circle and breathed in.

And stopped.

He turned his head left. Then right.

He took two steps toward a robe on the north side, and breathed, and his ears went back.

He whined, low, and the sound went all the way around the circle.

Three hundred robes.

Every seam had gone through my hands.

Every hood had been turned on my lap, at my mother's machine, for four weeks.

The wolf walked the circle.

He came past me and didn't stop.

He went around a second time, faster, and the whine in him got higher.

Someone near the water laughed, nervous, and shut up.

"He can't tell," a man said, not quietly enough. "They all smell like her."

Three robes down from me, Tressa threw back her hood.

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