Chapter 23: The Old House

Ingrid's POV

We came up the pass road with every headlight the pack owned.

The Beta's trucks went first, and wolves ran in the trees on both sides, close enough that I could hear them breathing.

I walked at the front beside the grey-bearded elder, after the lead truck stopped a quarter mile short of the house.

He did not say a word the whole way.

At the bend I passed the guardrail with the gap in it where a car had gone through twenty years ago.

I felt every one of them behind me see where I was looking.

I did not look.

The old house stood back from the road on a ridge, a long stone lodge with a veranda and a light in every window.

Two guards waited at the foot of the steps.

They watched two hundred wolves come out of the pines, and one of them took his hat off and held it against his chest.

Neither raised a hand.

I went up the steps with the elder at my shoulder and the Beta behind us, and the front door stood open.

Torin's voice came out first.

"Say it again, Father," he said.

"I'm slow tonight. Say how it works."

I stopped in the doorway.

The great room had been cleared to bare stone.

In the middle of it somebody had poured a ring of coarse white salt, and my children sat inside the ring.

Orin had pushed Hazel behind him and stood with both fists up.

His eyes were gold, solid gold, and it was the first time I had ever seen it, and I could not afford to think about it.

Hazel was crying without making a sound.

The healer sat against the wall in a straight chair with her wrists tied in her lap and dried blood in her white braids.

Torin stood outside the salt with his arms at his sides.

Blood had dried under his nose and down his collar, and he held himself upright by what looked like pure stubbornness.

He did not look at me, because looking at me would have told his father to turn around.

Aldric stood over the ring in his good coat, with his cane hooked over his arm.

In his right hand was a long thin knife.

"It is simple enough," Aldric said, and he sounded fond.

"My own wolf died with my health.

"Each of these two carries a pair, old strong ones, and one wolf out of a pair will do for an Elder who needs a body that works.

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