Chapter 12: The Choice

The elder struck her stick against the altar, once.

"Odette Harlan's naming is suspended," she said. "The heir of this pack will not be chosen by a girl who knew, and said nothing, and took the chair."

Odette's face crumpled.

She did not look at me again.

Two wardens walked her down the hill between the torches, and she went without a word.

My father stood at the altar with his hands hanging.

"Imogen," he said slowly. He said it like a word in another language. "That's the name?"

"That's the name."

"I should know it."

"You should."

"I don't." His voice broke. "I look at you, and I don't feel anything, and I'm so sorry."

My mother had both hands over her mouth.

She came a step toward me and stopped.

"You have my eyes," she whispered.

"I know."

"Did I braid your hair?"

I could not speak.

I nodded.

She wept openly in front of two hundred wolves, a woman whose child stood in front of her and who couldn't have said what she'd lost.

I wanted to run to her, and I stood still.

If I touched her and she flinched, I didn't know what I would do.

Torin's hand found the small of my back.

"Come on," he said quietly. "That's enough."

I let him take me down the hill.

At the gate, the hound stopped and looked back at my mother, and then at me, and trotted on.

I did not speak the whole drive home.

The lodge was dark, and Fenna had left a plate of cold chicken on the table with a note.

*Eat.* That was all.

I couldn't.

I stood in Torin's room with my coat still on and the cracked stone in my fist.

He had fixed the headboard.

The sheets were fresh.

"I can undo it," I said.

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