Chapter 23: Marked Back

"Mama?" Milo said again, from the dark of the spare room. "I want water."

"I'm coming, baby."

I filled a glass at the sink with a hand that wasn't quite steady.

Behind me, Dalton stood at the counter with his back to the doorway, buttoning his jeans, shaking with silent laughter.

I felt it through the bond, and I elbowed him on my way past.

Milo drank the whole glass, handed it back and said, "Why is your face red?"

"Hot," I said. "From the stove."

He accepted this, and went back to sleep.

The next full moon came three weeks later, on the very night the old summons had set for the council.

I had not forgotten.

We held the ceremony in the clearing behind Highfall lodge, on the flat ground where I had first shifted.

Two packs stood in a wide ring in the dark, eleven wolves from Highfall and two hundred from Alder Creek.

The moon came over the pines and turned every face silver.

I stood at the edge of the clearing in a plain green dress.

My brother held my elbow.

He was thirty-three and a civil engineer, and he had been crying for twenty minutes.

"I should have told you," he said again, hoarse.

"You told me."

"Six years late."

"You told me, and I'm walking in," I said. "Stop apologizing and walk."

He gave a wet laugh and led me down the aisle of wolves.

Dalton waited at the far end, in a dark jacket, with nothing in his hands.

He did not look at the crowd.

He looked at me, and I felt every part of him leap, and my own heart answered.

When I reached him my brother took his hand off my arm and shook Dalton's.

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