Chapter 13: Custody of the Seat

Hester put her cane across the doorway before I could reach the knob.

"Not like that," she said. "You are not going out there as a nurse in a borrowed shirt."

She opened the biscuit tin and took out the silver ring.

I threaded it onto the cord of my boot and hung it outside my shirt, where the thirty wolves could see it.

Tobias was already at the porch rail, with his split lip scabbed over and his jaw set.

"Maisy phoned the other two heirs at midnight," he said. "She told them an Alpha was holding a witness in custody."

"Is that what this is?"

"It's what I'd call it."

I walked down the slope to the water with Hester's cane tapping behind me.

The creek ran shallow and fast between us and the Ashfall bank.

Dirk had not moved from the front of his wolves, and he looked as though he had not slept either.

"Dara," he said. "Please. Don't make me carry you out."

"You can't carry me anywhere. You'd need my say to set one foot on this side."

"Your say belongs to the seat. My father's order..."

An engine cut him off.

Two trucks came down the Cold Creek road and stopped on the bank behind me, one after the other.

The Iron Ridge heir climbed out of the first with a dozen wolves at his back. The Low Pine heir climbed out of the second with his own.

Neither of them looked at Dirk. They came and stood on my side of the water.

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