Chapter 8: Parley

"You're not coming," Keir said.

"It's my name he's trading."

"It's my answer he wants."

"Then you won't mind me hearing it."

We were standing in his kitchen at eleven in the morning, and Gran was pretending very hard to scrub a clean pan.

Keir looked at me for a long time.

"Fine," he said. "Stand behind me."

"I'll stand where I want."

Gran laughed into the sink.

The parley was on the gravel bar below the fork, the long gray tongue of stones where the river slowed and bent.

I knew every inch of it.

I didn't let myself look at the place near the water where the stones were darkest.

Larch Ridge stood on the east bank, forty wolves in human skin, with Conrad and Beckett out front.

Black Fork stood on the west bank behind Keir and me.

Lorne was with them, beside Gran, in a borrowed Black Fork hoodie that came to his knuckles.

He'd insisted on coming.

The twins saw him and looked away.

Conrad came down onto the gravel alone.

Keir went down to meet him.

I went too, a step to Keir's left.

Conrad's eyes went to me first.

For a second he looked like the man who had taught me to ride a bike on the Larch Ridge road.

Then he looked at Keir.

"Scanlon."

"Brodie."

"You got my offer."

"I want to hear you say it."

Conrad's mouth tightened.

He raised his voice so it carried to both banks.

"I'll add to it, so both packs hear. Black Fork gets the hunting up the Tamarack to the bend as well."

He nodded at me without looking at me.

"And she gets her Choosing back. Any of my sons but Beckett. They'll take her."

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