Chapter 23: Saturday

Devon's POV

On Saturday morning I put on a blue gown that smelled of the rental closet and walked across a stage in town.

The college hall held three hundred folding chairs.

I found my row from the stage steps without looking, because I already knew where to look.

Kellan sat on the aisle in the fifth row in a jacket I had never seen him wear.

The old dog lay in the aisle beside him with his chin on his paws.

An usher had tried to move him.

The dog had looked at her, and she had gone away.

"Devon Verrall," the dean read.

I crossed the stage.

Somebody whistled from the fifth row, shrill and unashamed, and the old dog barked once, a deep rough sound that carried to the back wall.

The hall laughed, and I laughed too, with my diploma in my hand.

I looked up the length of the room.

Emmett was standing in the side aisle in a clean shirt.

He held a bouquet of yellow daisies against his chest with both hands, and he made no move to bring it forward.

He just stood where I could see him.

Near the back doors, alone in a row of empty seats, sat Dane.

Highridge wolves sat on one side of the hall and Stonefall wolves on the other, and every one of them was watching him.