Chapter 24: My Own Name

The sea at Blackmere was grey that morning, with a white edge where it met the shingle.

Conrad had set a table on the shore.

It was an old plank table from the kitchen, carried down to the beach by four wolves and covered with a plain white cloth.

On it lay one page, and one pen.

The page was a bonding contract.

It had Conrad's name on the Alpha's line, in his own hand, and the bride's line below it was blank.

Half of Blackmere stood on the shingle in their coats, with the wind pulling at their hair.

The old woman with the stick had a folding chair, and she had planted it in the best spot.

"You are late," she told me.

"The sun's barely up."

"At my age, that is late."

I laughed, and then I saw who stood behind her, and I stopped.

Nan had come up from the south in the truck at dawn.

Tobin was with her, tall in a borrowed jacket, with a fistful of sea thrift he had pulled up on the road.

And beside him, two steps back, with her hair tied plainly and her hand healed to a stiff pink scar, stood Daphne.

She held a small cloth bundle in both hands.

"I won't stay," she said, before I could speak. "Nan says I'm allowed to come if I don't talk."

"You're talking."

"Sorry."

She held out the bundle.

I unwrapped it.

It was my mother's silver crescent, polished, with the seam where it had been cut open cleanly mended.

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