Chapter 9: Duncan's POV: The Stone

Duncan's POV

I watched her put an Alpha against the wall of a culvert, and I did not move a muscle to help.

I stood in the trees above the north line in my wolf.

Every instinct I had told me to go down there.

She had said she would handle it herself.

So I stood still, and I learned what that costs.

Dane MacCarthy walked away stiff-shouldered, with his own scouts bowing to the woman he had cut seven times.

I felt something then that I hadn't felt since I was a boy.

It was pride.

It was nearly as bad as the other thing.

Then Hester MacCarthy knelt in the snow.

I have sat at the head of the Council of Alphas for six years, and every one of them has knelt to me at least once.

I know a performance when I see one.

The old woman bowed her head and spoke softly.

She set the lantern down so it lit her wet eyes.

Morven believed her.

I felt it through the bond, a slow and dangerous loosening.

Hester patted her hand, got to her feet and walked off down the path alone.

I followed her.

She didn't go home.

She climbed the long hill to the Stone Circle with her lantern swinging, and stopped under the big Stone at the top.

I lay down in the dark beneath a pine, thirty yards off, with the wind in my face.

She knelt at the foot of the Stone.

There is a dry hollow under its overhang that every pup in Black Pine knows.

She reached in and took out a cloth bundle.

Inside it were a small black kettle, a paper packet and a coil of silver cord.

Her fingers shook as she laid them out.

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