Chapter 19: Seven Alphas, One Child

Seven Alphas sat along the long table in Hollowmere's pack hall, and not one of them was smiling.

I stood at the foot of it in my grey coat with my hair still full of frozen grass.

Poppy was asleep upstairs with Hester on the floor beside her bed.

I had made Hester promise not to leave the room.

Corbin stood a half step behind my left shoulder.

He had washed the blood off and put on a clean shirt.

He did not stand like an Alpha. He stood like a guest in his own house.

Alpha Whitcombe rose at the head of the table.

He wore a new black coat and a hard face.

His daughter was not beside him. She had been put off Hollowmere ground at sunrise.

"Alphas of the north," he said. "I have called you here under the old law."

"A pack in our region has no strength to hold its ground."

"Hollowmere has an Alpha who lost his wolf before two hundred witnesses."

"It has a debt it cannot pay, and a Luna who has done nothing to earn her chair."

"I earned it," I said.

"Sit down, Dr. Roarke."

"I'll stand."

A few of the Alphas shifted.

One old woman at the far end looked at me with the first interest I had seen.

"That is not my worst charge," Whitcombe said. He raised his voice.

"Hollowmere's Luna carries the moon thread, and her daughter carries it too."

The hall went still.

"Don't," Corbin said under his breath.

"A child of five," Whitcombe said, "who will be the strongest wolf in the north in a generation."

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