Chapter 20: The Stone

I changed back before dawn, with a blanket round my shoulders and Tobias's arm around me.

The pack was still howling when I stopped shaking.

"The thread," I said. "It's gone."

"It tore because you're whole," Tobias said. "You don't need it to hold you up any more."

By dusk, I was standing at the Alpha's stone.

It rose from the middle of the Murgatroyd meadow, a grey slab twice my height, with the full moon coming up behind it.

The whole pack stood in a ring on the grass.

There were hundreds of them, in coats and jackets and good shoes, with torches planted in the ground at their feet.

Rosa stood at my left shoulder, as the law required.

She had not spoken to me since the cabin road.

Tobias stood at my right, a pace back, hands loose, a guest at the edge of the circle.

Across the stone, Alexander stood alone.

He was thinner. The hollows under his eyes had gone purple, and his hands hung at his sides.

He did not look at me. He had kept the promise.

Giada stood at the edge of the ring beside a tripod and a ring light.

She had her phone on it, red light blinking, filming the whole rite for an engagement video the Alpha had approved.

She smiled when she saw me look.

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