Chapter 4: Three Days

I walked into the hall at noon on the third day with my bag over my shoulder.

Every wolf in Cold Spur was already inside.

They had come early to get a seat.

Lucan stood on the dais in his good grey jacket.

A small table had been set beside him with a silver cup, a bowl of salt, and a ceremonial knife laid on a white cloth.

It was the marking table.

He had set it up for me, and he had been so sure of the three days that he had already laid out the knife.

"Three days," Lucan said, and he smiled down the length of the hall. "Right on time."

A few people laughed.

My side still pulled when I breathed, but I made myself walk straight up the middle aisle, past the benches, past the elders' table.

Agnes sat at the back with her hands folded in her lap, and she didn't look at me.

I stopped at the foot of the dais.

Hester stood next to her son with a handkerchief pressed to her mouth.

She was crying.

It was lovely, quiet crying, the kind that made people lean toward her.

"Oh, Val," she said. "Thank God."

I put my bag down on the floor.

I took the plain steel pack ring off my right hand, the one every Cold Spur wolf was given at sixteen, and set it on the elders' table.

It made a small flat sound.

The hall went quiet.

"I'm not here to stay," I said. "I'm here to give this back."

Lucan's smile thinned.

"Val."

"And I want my mother's necklace. It's in the Alpha's safe, in the box with my parents' papers. The council has held it for me since I was ten."

For a moment he only stared at me.

Then he came down the two steps and stopped close enough that I smelled his cologne.

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