Chapter 21: Dalton's POV

Dalton's POV

The infirmary yard at Cold Fork was trampled flat by two hundred pairs of boots.

The last time I had stood here, I was on my way into the infirmary to say the worst thing I had ever said.

Now the snow was clean and the sky was white, and the door of the infirmary stood open.

I knew the smell of that room.

Antiseptic, and blood, and Miriam's scent from the cot.

It was still there, three weeks later.

I had asked the healer not to scrub the floor.

The pack stood in a ring.

At the head of it, on the infirmary step, Miriam waited with our daughter on her hip and our son in Torren's arms beside her.

She wore a grey coat that the king's tailor had made and she wore her hair loose.

She did not look at me.

I understood it.

This was not hers to carry.

The old woman in the patched coat set two wooden bowls on the step, one black and one white.

"Each wolf takes one stone from the basket," she said. "The white bowl keeps the Alpha. The black bowl takes his seat."

"You vote with your hand, and nobody watches it."

She turned to me.

"Anything to say, Ravenshaw?"

"Yes."

I took off the silver chain and held it in my fist.

Then I went down on both knees in the snow, at the foot of the infirmary step.

The ring of wolves went quiet.

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