Chapter 19: The Gathering

The whole pack came to the meadow at dusk.

There were more than two hundred of them, standing in the long grass below the lodge as the light went orange.

Briony stood on the flat rock at the front in a white coat, with her pale gold bracelet on her wrist and her hair brushed to a shine.

She had rehearsed this.

Torin walked up the slope beside me with a hand on Jonah's shoulder, and I carried Hazel.

I put the twins down on a blanket at the edge of the crowd, where I could see them, with the stuffed rabbit between them.

He was walking slowly, and he was not steady.

Nobody had told the pack.

They saw only that the Alpha's skin was grey and that he came into the meadow at the side of a wolfless woman.

A murmur followed us through the grass.

"Alpha," Briony said, in her sweetest voice.

"Thank you for coming. I know these are painful days, so I'll be brief."

"Then begin," Torin said.

"A woman who took the pack's money and fled has returned to claim your name for two children."

"They may belong to any man in Oregon."

"She lied to you about their father, to your face.

"She has lied to all of us."

"I told the truth in my own shop," I said.

"With four elders to hear it."

"The elders have been deceived."

"Luna."

The voice came from the crowd, and it was dry and shaking.

The Beta stepped out of the front rank.

He was a heavy, grey-haired man in a work coat, and he looked as though he had not slept in three days.

"Father," Briony said, and the sweetness cracked.

"Sit down."

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