Chapter 19: The Dais

Nobody moved.

Hortense stood on the dais with her arm out and her finger pointed at me.

Twenty duty wolves lined the walls of the hall in Stonecrown grey.

I knew eleven of them by name.

I had signed their pay for six years.

I had held a cold cloth to the youngest one's head the winter his mother died.

"Take her," Hortense said again.

A wolf at the foot of the dais, a heavy, grizzled man, looked at me for a long moment.

He put his hand over his heart, and he stepped back.

The wolf beside him did the same. Then the one beside him.

Then all of them, down both walls, a line of grey going back one man at a time.

"That's her," the grizzled wolf said into the silence. "That's the Luna. I'd know her cough in the dark."

A ripple of laughter went through the hall, startled and wet, and then a woman began to clap.

"Be quiet," Hortense said. "All of you. I am the Alpha's mother."

"You are," I said. "Tell the king what you did to my father's wagons."

"I did nothing."

"Three of my father's wagons were burned at the northern pass.

"The raiders wore grey cloth from your own quartermaster's stores, dyed to look like Tarn Valley."

I turned toward the doors.

"Caleb."

He had slipped out during the shouting.

He came back in now through the side door of the hall.

He held the Beta of Stonecrown by the collar, with his hands tied behind him in a bridle strap.

The Beta's face was grey. He didn't struggle.

"I found him in the stable yard," Caleb said. "Saddling a horse."

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