Chapter 18: The Tin

Lars's POV

Linnea had said "pretender," and three hundred people had turned to look at the woman I loved.

My wolf wanted to go through the crowd.

I stood at Marit's left shoulder and held it down with both hands.

She wasn't looking at me.

She was looking at the one pale woman in the front row, with her chin level.

"Petra," Marit said.

Petra walked out of the crowd with her medicine bag over her shoulder.

She was shorter than most of the wolves she passed, and not one of them stopped her.

She set the bag on a flat rock and took out a battered butter-cookie tin.

The lid screeched when she pried it up.

Inside, on a folded square of flannel, lay a small red wool mitten, stiff and faded to the color of old brick.

"Eighteen years ago I pulled this out of a ten-year-old girl's left fist," Petra said. "She was blue. I had to cut her fingers open to get it."

She held it up in her palm.

A murmur ran through the Holmberg pack.

An elder leaned forward on his cane. "That's a child's mitten. There are a thousand of them."

"Eli Holmberg's mother knitted two," Marit said. "She stitched his initials inside the cuff. E.V."

Petra turned the cuff back.

The stitches were still there, in white thread.

Garrick had gone gray.

"Linnea," Marit said. "Hold up your keys."

Linnea's hand closed over them.

"This is absurd," she said. "I found that mitten on the shore the day Eli died. I've kept it all these years because I loved him."

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