Chapter 26: The Seed Beds

We came over the rise into a wall of heat.

The seed beds behind the hall were burning in long, even rows.

Someone had poured oil on the rows. The flames ran along them in straight lines, and the smoke rolled up black.

A bucket line had already formed from the hall tap. Omegas stood in it in their blankets, passing water hand to hand.

Pia was at the head of it, soot to her eyebrows. She was screaming at a warrior to get a hose.

"It's the moonflax!" she shouted when she saw me. "Clara, it's all going!"

My knees nearly went.

Six years I had waited to plant that bed. The whole cure was in it.

"Torin," I said.

"I'm here."

"I need my wolf."

"Then take her."

I pulled my sweater over my head in front of three hundred people and did not care.

The change came easily this time. My wolf had been waiting under my skin all day.

I came down on four white-gold paws, and the fire roared in my ears.

Torin shifted beside me. He was black and enormous, with his green eyes lit by the flames.

Across the yard, Cedar Hollow's warriors stopped and stared. A white wolf and a black one stood side by side in front of the flames.

Nobody had told them what to do, so I told them with my eyes. Two dozen of them broke for the wet blankets.

I knew exactly what to do. My wolf knew it better than I did.

She tore at the soil with her forepaws.

I dug a trench ahead of the fire, fast, throwing earth in a fan behind me. Torin dug the other side of it and shoved the dirt over the burning rows.

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