Chapter 16: The Household Law

Judd was out of the bed before the second howl ended.

He came to the window in his jeans with his chest bare and the pink scar showing.

The four wolves below went silent.

The old one in front looked up at him, then at me, then back at him.

Then she turned and loped out of the alley, and the other three went after her.

"She's gone to tell my father," Judd said.

"I know."

"Every wolf on the mountain will know by breakfast."

"I know, Judd."

He turned around and looked at me in the gray light.

Then he put his face in my hair and breathed in, slow.

"I'm not sorry," he said.

"Neither am I."

His phone rang at seven.

He put it on speaker so I could hear.

"Bring her," Ozias said. "Noon. The great hall. She has my word she'll walk in and walk out."

The line went dead.

At noon, the great hall was fuller than the night of the attack.

Wolves stood along every wall and up the stair and out onto the lawn, where the doors had been propped open.

They parted for us without being asked.

Not for Judd.

For me.

I felt it all the way down the room, a whole pack turning its heads as I went by.

Nostrils flaring.

Faces changing.

For five years I'd walked through this hall like a draft nobody noticed.

Now every one of them could smell me.

Ozias sat in the oak chair on the stage.

My mother stood beside him with both hands locked in front of her, the knuckles white.

Wendell stood on his other side in a navy quarter-zip.

He looked heartbroken.

He looked like he'd been up all night worrying about us.

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