Chapter 12: Ironpine's Terms

My mother got back into her station wagon.

She didn't say goodbye.

She did a three-point turn on the narrow road with her hands shaking on the wheel, and her taillights went up the river road toward Redmoor.

I stood there holding the quilt until Wyatt came and picked up the boxes.

"You heard," I said.

"Wolf ears." He put the boxes in the truck bed. "Behind you."

"She's behind me."

"Which makes yours the firstborn."

"Which makes mine the heir," I said. "Which is why he wants it so badly."

Wyatt shut the tailgate.

"And why your sister wanted you to keep drinking that tea," he said.

On Saturday the Ironpine elders met to decide what to do with me.

The hall was the long room at the front of the pack house, with a stone fireplace at one end and a scarred pine table down the middle.

Nine elders sat around it.

Wyatt sat at the head.

His Beta stood behind him with his arms folded.

I stood at the foot of the table, because no one had offered me a chair.

The oldest elder was a man with a white braid down his back.

He didn't bother with hello.

"Nineteen years ago," he said, "Redmoor wolves came over that bridge at night and killed six of ours. Including your Alpha's father."

"I know."

"Garrett Rhodes's father led them."

"I know that too."

"And now Rhodes's mate sleeps in our infirmary and eats our food, and Rhodes writes to the Council that our Alpha took her from him."

"I'm not his mate," I said. "He rejected me."

"So you say."

A woman elder halfway down the table spoke up.

She had a little boy of about six in her lap, with his left arm in a sling.

"She set my grandson's arm on Thursday," the woman said. "When he fell out of the loft. Healer was down at the river."

"That doesn't make her ours."

"Didn't say it did. Said she set it straight. The healer looked at it after and said she couldn't have done it better."

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