Chapter 7: Northcrest

My father's hall had a stone floor and a hearth big enough to stand in.

At the head of the table stood a chair carved with the Northcrest wolf.

A man I had never seen was sitting in it.

He was heavyset, with a red beard and the Crown's grey badge on his collar.

He had one boot propped on the rung of the chair beside him.

The whole pack had come in off the hills to see me.

Three hundred people stood along the walls in their coats.

None of them were looking at the man in the chair.

They were looking at me.

"I'm the steward appointed by the King," the man said, without getting up.

"Since your father's death, someone has had to keep order. I'm told you've come to take it off my hands."

"I've come home," I said.

Torin stood a step behind me and said nothing.

He had driven us three days and slept in the truck.

When I told him in the yard that the road ended here, he said it ended where I said it did.

"This is the Alpha's chair," I said.

"It is. And it's been empty for a year, and Northcrest has been getting by."

"Get out of it."

"I don't think you understand how this works, Lady Morland."

"My father left a will."

An old woman came out from the crowd leaning on a cane, with a folded paper in her other hand.

She had been my father's secretary for forty years, and she had not once raised her voice in my hearing.

"It was sealed with the Alpha's ring, and I've held it since the funeral," she said.

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