Chapter 14: The First Night

The pack hall was never meant to hold that many people at midnight.

They stood along the walls and sat on the stage steps, and they kept looking at me and then looking away.

Northlake had gone back to the lake with a hundred torches and a promise.

Garrick had stayed behind with a problem.

The elders sat at the long table where the gift-giving had been.

The stout old man in the green parka stood up first.

"Moon-reader says the seat is yours, Sigrid," he said. "That's settled."

"The loans aren't."

"Alpha Thorsen holds every note this pack has signed since I was a young man," said a woman beside him.

"The mill, the roof, the fuel. If we default, he takes the land."

"Harold said it was all handled," said a third elder, sourly. "He said it every winter."

Nobody in the room looked at my father.

They had locked him in the hall's back office with two men at the door.

I could hear him pacing through the wall.

"How much?" I asked.

"Four hundred thousand," the green parka said. "And the interest is the old man's own word."

Somebody groaned.

"So we can't pay," said a young man near the back. "And you want us to bleed for you."

"I didn't say that," I said.

"You didn't have to." He pushed off the wall. "My brother's got a job at Northlake's lumber yard. You think he's going to keep it?"

A dozen people started talking at once.

It split the room in half.

One side wanted to give the old man his deed and take the quiet.

The other side stood up and shouted them down.

I stood there with my hands open at my sides and felt it all pull at me in different directions.

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