Chapter 12: The Forced Rite

Dane came through the back door with two enforcers behind him, and I did not run.

I could have shifted.

I could have put all three of them through the kitchen wall.

But I had spent seven years being carried out of rooms, and I wanted to walk into this one.

"I'll go to the Stone on my own feet," I said.

"You'll go how I say," said Dane.

"Then you'll have to carry me past two hundred wolves."

He hesitated.

I stood up from the table, and the tin of my mother's things went under my arm.

Nobody stopped me.

Behind the pantry door the flour barrel creaked, and a moment later I heard the elder's scarf brush the wall.

She had slipped out the side window.

I had asked her to do exactly that if the door opened.

I walked out of Hester's house between her son and his men, down the long yard and up the hill.

Dane did not touch me.

I think he knew that I would have bitten him.

By the time we reached the Stone Circle, they were already there.

They came up out of the trees in twos and threes, and then in dozens.

The oldest elder had gone through the pack at a run, house to house.

Scouts, cooks and teachers came, and mothers with children on their hips.

Every wolf of Black Pine stood among the pines around the circle and said nothing.

I saw Tobin at the edge, white-faced, with his satchel clutched to his chest.

Beyond him, a hundred paces off, under a tall pine at the very edge of the trees, stood Duncan.

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