Chapter 7: Under My Protection

"Who told you it was silver?" Lachlan asked.

He was on his feet, one hand on the table, his stitched leg locked straight.

Vivian blinked at him.

"Nobody had to. You reek of it. Silver on a wolf smells like old pennies."

She stepped past Rowena and set the basket on the counter.

"Bread, honey, and the good tea. I only came to see if you were alive."

Lachlan sniffed the air once and rubbed his jaw.

"That's true," he said slowly. "It does."

Rowena said nothing.

She had not smelled pennies on the porch. She had smelled frost and woodsmoke.

She stood there holding the knowledge, with nowhere to put it.

At noon Hester marched her to the clinic anyway.

"If you hide, they'll say you're ashamed," the old woman said. "Come and wash instruments where everyone can see you."

Lachlan parked in the lot, twenty yards off, and did not get out.

The clinic was a long low house at the edge of the settlement.

On Thursdays every wolf with a cold or a cut came through its front room.

The room went silent when Rowena walked in.

She put on an apron and picked up a tray of clean needles.

She did not look at anyone.

A very old wolf at the front of the line shuffled forward and took her hand in both of his.

"Happy birthday, girl," he said.

Rowena nearly dropped the tray.

"Thank you," she whispered.

Behind him, a woman snorted and turned away, and a child asked loudly why Ro had no pack token.

Rowena kept her chin up.

She was bandaging a boy's thumb when the door banged open.

Three of Orson Crowe's wolves walked in, big men with their shirtsleeves rolled and their faces set.

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