Chapter 4: The Circle

The Three Rivers lodge sat in Fox Chapel, at the end of a long gravel drive.

A stone wall and a stand of old pines hid it from the road.

Mathias had given me one instruction in the car.

"Whatever happens in the circle, do not run."

"Wolves chase what runs. Stand still, and look at no one's throat."

"Is that all?"

"No," he said. "Also, don't be afraid of me."

I didn't answer, because I was a little afraid.

Not of him.

Of the way my skin hummed whenever his hand brushed mine.

The great hall had a ceiling of black beams and a fireplace big enough to roast a cow.

Over a hundred people stood around its edges, men and women and a few teenagers, all of them watching me.

They were dressed like normal people, but they didn't move like normal people.

They stood very still, and their eyes followed me without turning their heads.

Someone had cleared the center of the floor.

An old rope of braided silver lay on the boards in a ring about twelve feet across.

"The circle," Alden said from the side. "Step inside, Miss Halvorsen."

Mathias stayed where he was, at the edge, with his hands in fists.

He had shaved on the way over, in the car, with a razor from the glove box.

I hadn't known he had that face under the beard.

It was sharp and handsome and very hard, and every woman in the room was looking at it.

I stepped over the silver rope.

The room went quiet in a way I felt on my teeth.

"A human has asked for the Alpha," Alden said to the hall. "The pack may ask what it likes."

A woman in a gray sweater spoke first.

"Can she hold a litter?" she said. "Human women die in the bearing."

A man by the fire said, "She smells of flowers, not blood. She'll fold at the first full moon."

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