Chapter 15: Silver Creek Burns Its Mark

Marlo's POV

The hall was full by dawn, and nobody laughed.

Two hundred Silver Creek wolves stood shoulder to shoulder under the beams where my ugliest photo had once been projected.

Orrin lay in the next room under a sheet, with the pups' drawings still taped to his door.

I stood in front of the long table in my green dress, because I had come straight from the ridge, and Winnie stood on my left.

The old woman with the cane thumped it on the floorboards three times.

"Silver Creek votes its seat," she said. "Dane Brickell stands for it. He may speak once."

Dane stood at the side of the room, with no jacket and no ring.

"I made a mistake," he said. "I was trying to keep this pack alive."

"By lying to the best healer in four counties," a man called from the back.

"By letting a girl be laughed at in this hall!" a woman shouted.

"I never wanted that."

"You wrote the caption," Winnie said, clearly. "Your own cousin saw you."

The old woman thumped the cane again.

"The vote," she said. "Hands up for Dane Brickell as Alpha of Silver Creek."

Not one hand went up.

Dane looked around the room, and his mouth opened and shut.

"Hands up to strike his name from the pack roll."

All of them.

Two hundred hands went up in one motion.

Winnie reached into her coat pocket and put a napkin in my hand.

"I picked it up off the grass at the stone," she said. "I thought you'd want to be the one."

The grey flake of the old mark lay folded inside it.

I walked to the hearth and dropped it on the coals.

It curled, and the smell of hospital corridors rose off it, and then there was only smoke.

Behind me the pack began to file past the fire.

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