Chapter 23: Midnight

The oldest elder walked to the slab with the cane in both hands.

His knees were bad, and it took him a long time.

Enid stood where she was.

Nobody had told her she could sit, and nobody had told her to leave.

"Tilda Swinburne stands as the ward of Dorian Ketch, who has sworn her in this hall," the old man said.

"I find the oath whole."

He lifted the cane an inch.

The clock above the doors began to strike.

The cane came down on the form, once, with a crack that shook the pen on the slab.

"Sealed," he said.

The second stroke rang.

I felt the oath settle on me, warm and heavy.

I was an Iron Hollow wolf.

I was a ward with a guardian, and no one could strike me.

The fifth stroke rang, and the sixth.

Garrick had not moved from the open boards.

He was looking at me, and for the first time in seven months he did not look away.

The tenth stroke.

The eleventh.

The twelfth rang out and trembled in the rafters, and then the hall was silent.

I was twenty-one years old.

"It's midnight," Garrick said.

He crossed the floor in front of three hundred and sixty wolves and stopped in front of me.

His hands were shaking, and he took mine anyway.

"Tilda Swinburne," he said, so everyone could hear. "You are my fated mate."

"I knew on the morning of your twentieth birthday.

"Your wolf woke up and mine answered, and I couldn't sit across the table from you."

"I declined you at the Naming because the law gave me no other way to keep you free."

I stared up at him.

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