Chapter 19: The Reading

The hall was so full at first light that wolves stood on the benches and in the windows.

Packs from three valleys had come for the banquet and stayed for the scandal, and nobody had gone home.

The council sat in a row behind a plain wooden table.

The grey stone lay on the table on a square of cloth, with nothing around it.

I stood in front of it in my own green dress, and Leon stood on my left.

Crispin stood a respectful ten feet away, with Pat and Dinah on either side of him.

I did not look at him.

I could feel him anyway, and I could feel him not looking at me.

Timothy Ramsay walked in alone at the last moment.

His hands hung empty at his sides.

He smiled at the old Alpha and took the seat at the end of the council bench.

"The Luna asked for this reading," the old Alpha said, "and the Alpha of Redfern has agreed to it. We will hold it as it was set. Plainly."

She raised her hand, and the hall went silent.

"The stone drinks the scent of a bite and gives back the scent of the biter. Luna, bare the mark."

I unbuttoned my collar and pulled it down over my left shoulder.

Four hundred people looked at the scar.

The heavy Alpha lifted the stone off the cloth with both hands and set it against my skin.

It was cold for a moment.

Then it grew warm, then hot, and my shoulder began to beat in time with it.

A thin thread of smoke rose off the grey surface and uncurled in the air above my head.

It smelled of cedar.

It smelled of the pillow on the morning after my wedding, and of a coat on a terrace, and of a man's skin under rain.

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