Chapter 7: Midwinter Court

Frostfall Court filled the throne hall to the doors.

Every Alpha in Eldmark came to kneel to the King once a year, and every Alpha brought a wolf pack's worth of silk and swagger.

I had been in the palace nine days.

Alaric had not coughed once.

I stood at the back of the hall in a gown the color of dark wine, and my hands would not stop sweating.

The seamstress had cut it to my measure without comment.

It fit through the waist and hips, and it showed every curve I had spent years hiding in Vandeleur aprons.

Alaric had stopped in the corridor when he first saw me in it.

He had said nothing at all.

He had only looked.

Then he had turned away and put his fist against the wall.

I had been thinking about that fist ever since.

Jory sat in the gallery above with Hettie.

She had been invited as my guest.

She wore a hat with a feather and told everybody who would listen that she had taught me everything.

"I'm not the Luna of anywhere," I had told her at the door.

"Yet," she had said.

I did not argue.

The doors opened at the far end, and the herald cried, "Garrick Vandeleur, Alpha of Vandeleur Pack, and his mate."

My whole body went cold.

He walked down the center of the hall in black and silver.

His hair was oiled back, and his jaw was shaved, and he had a wolf-head pin at his throat.

Wynne Gisborne walked on his arm in a green gown that had cost half a year of Vandeleur's tithes.

She had the Luna ring on her finger.

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