Claiming the Spare Twin novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Founder's Stone

We walked into the Marrow Moot Hall at the third bell, through the front doors, with Dorran at my left and Hester at my right.

Every Cold Creek wolf I had ever known was already inside.

They stood along the walls in their church clothes, and nobody said my name.

My father waited at the head of the hall beside the founder's stone, with Rosalie one step behind him in white.

The stone was a grey slab as tall as my waist, worn smooth by two hundred years of hands.

I had walked past it all my life and never once been allowed to touch it.

"Elders," my father said, as we reached the front. "My daughter is unwell. I won't have her humiliated again."

"Move aside, Osmund," Hester said.

"A stone does not open for the sick."

"Then it will stay shut, and you'll have lost nothing," she said. "Move."

He moved.

I stood in front of the slab and looked at the hollow cut into its top, the shape of a hand.

My palm was damp, so I wiped it on my dress.

Behind me Dorran said nothing at all, and I was glad of it.

I laid my hand in the hollow.

For a moment there was only cold stone.

Then something under my ribs lifted its head, and the white wolf pushed up through my arm into my palm.

The stone gave a long, grinding groan, and the whole top of it slid aside.

A sound went through the hall, four hundred people breathing in at once.

Inside lay an iron box, black with age.

I lifted it out with both hands, and it was so light I thought it must be empty.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Claiming the Spare Twin from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.