Chapter 14: Pack Law

"Stay in the car," I told Roth.

"Stevie, they will..."

"They won't touch me. I'm marked."

I opened the door and stepped out onto the asphalt in my socks.

The gray wolf stopped ten feet from me.

It was Tiernan.

I knew it by the thread in my chest and by the green of the eyes.

His ears went flat when he saw mine.

He changed where he stood.

It took a few seconds and it was ugly to watch, bone and fur folding back into a man.

Dane was there at once with a coat.

Tiernan put it on. He was breathing hard, and his hands were not steady.

"You came back," he said.

"I didn't come back. I came out."

Around us the road was full of people.

They stood between the trees and along the shoulder, men and women in jackets thrown over pajamas.

Some were barefoot, and some had wolves pacing beside them.

Every face was turned toward me.

Somebody had called them out of bed before dawn, and I could guess who.

"You're all here," I said, and my voice carried over the road. "Good. I want you to hear this."

Nobody spoke.

"Nineteen years ago this pack killed forty-one people in a house in a valley. My mother was one of them. I was the baby."

A woman near the front put her hand over her mouth.

"I didn't know that until last night," I said. "Your alpha did."

I turned to Tiernan.

"Tell them."

He didn't ask what.

He walked past me to the middle of the road and faced his own pack.

The coat hung open on him, and the dawn was coming up gray behind him.

"The Ashworth order was signed by my aunt," he said. "I witnessed it. I was ten. I was told it was a list for a feast day."

A murmur ran through the crowd.

"I found the file in my father's safe when I was eighteen," Tiernan said. "I read what it was, and I told no one."

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