Chapter 10: What the Elders Said

Mathias's POV

The silver wolf stood on the dais with her head high and gold light running up her legs.

I had stood in the doorway of the Redfern lodge for twenty minutes with my hands at my sides.

I had not moved once.

I had promised her I would not interfere.

Now I understood why she had asked.

The moon cleared the pines, and she went rigid.

I felt it through the mark on her shoulder, a sharp tug.

Something in her went still and settled and was finished.

She dropped to her side on the boards.

The shift reversed itself in one long shudder.

She lay on the wood in Odette's thin body with her hair across her face, breathing hard.

I was across the hall before I knew I had moved.

I got my coat around her.

She turned her head and looked up at me, grey-eyed, pale and shaking.

"Did it hold?" she said.

I did not have to ask what she meant.

I could feel her soul in that body as clearly as I had felt it on the road.

It had stopped straining against the walls.

It was settled in the thin frame, and it was hers.

"It held," I said.

"Then I'm stuck."

"You're here," I said. "That's all I care about."

She almost smiled.

Behind us, the eldest of the Redfern pack had come to the foot of the dais.

He was an old man with a white beard and a stick.

The whole hall had gone quiet to hear him.

"The stone has spoken," he said. "Whatever coat she wears, the wolf that answered is the Redfern wolf."

"That is Valerie Redfern, daughter of the last Alpha. She is the heir."

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