Chapter 15: The Sawmill

We reached the sawmill an hour before midnight, on foot, with the wind in our faces.

The king's riders had stopped a mile back on my word.

I would not give Harlan a reason to put a baby in the water.

Torren went in on my left, a black wolf with his head low.

Dalton went on my right.

I had never seen his wolf, in seven years.

He was big and grey, with a torn ear and scars across his shoulder, and he moved through the snow without a sound.

The mill stood at the bend of a frozen pond, a long black shed with one lit window.

I smelled twelve wolves around it.

I smelled my daughter in the middle of them, faint and warm and alive.

I smelled Harlan's pine soap, and I had to stop and shake my head to keep from running straight in.

Dalton pressed his shoulder against mine.

Then he shifted back behind a woodpile.

He came out in his torn shirt and trousers, barefoot in the snow.

He walked straight across the open ground toward the shed.

I watched him go with my hackles up.

"Cold Fork," he said.

He didn't shout.

He didn't need to.

His voice went across the pond, and the doors of the shed banged open.

Wolves came out of it in their skins, men I knew by name.

The man who had taught me to skate on this pond.

The butcher's two sons.

A woman who had brought me soup in my ninth month.

"Alpha," one of them said uncertainly.

"Harlan Hesketh has stolen a baby from the king's nursery," Dalton said.

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