Chapter 22: The Marking

Valerie's POV

At noon the sun came out for the first time in a week.

Both packs stood on the hillside in the melting snow, all of them, from the oldest Cold Spur man to a Ridgeback baby on a hip.

The Moon Stone threw a short grey shadow across the ring where I had fought Lucan.

I stood on the flat step at its foot, in my mother's necklace and my own pack ring, with my hair down.

I had slept two hours.

It had been enough.

Joss came up the path alone.

He had put on a clean shirt, and he'd shaved, and he kept his hands slightly away from his sides, with nothing in them.

Behind him, in a long line, came Ridgeback.

They stopped at the edge of the ring.

Joss walked on until he was ten feet from me, and then he stopped too.

"Valerie Wray," he said.

His voice carried to the back.

"Alpha of Cold Spur by the oath and by the stone. I'm Joss Galloway, Alpha of Ridgeback. I came to ask you something."

"Ask," I said.

I heard my own voice shake.

"You told me to ask where they could hear." He took a breath. "So hear it, all of you. Mark me."

A murmur went along both lines.

An Alpha did not ask that.

An Alpha did not stand in front of two packs and offer his own shoulder to somebody else's teeth.

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