Chapter 29: Torvald

"Somebody's making coffee," I said.

Vidar opened one eye.

"Tove," he said. "She's burned the toast too."

I breathed in.

Burned toast, black and bitter, three floors down.

"Oh, my God," I said. "I can smell her burning toast."

He started to laugh, and his whole chest moved under my cheek, warm all the way through.

"Welcome to a wolf house," he said. "There's no privacy. You get used to it."

There wasn't a line of frost on him anywhere.

I put my hand flat on his chest anyway and counted.

Sixty-two.

"Normal," I said.

"Is that good?"

"It's the best number I've ever counted."

At noon the great hall was full to the doors.

The pack stood along the walls.

The eleven Alphas sat at the long table, and the old council sat on the bench by the hearth.

Arne sat beside the Duluth Alpha in his ambulance jacket, because she'd told him to.

In the middle of the stone floor stood the people who'd tried to keep me off the point.

The thin old man from the council bench, with his hands shaking.

Two of the men from the fish house, and the one from the cabin with my poker's mark across his temple.

The Marquette Alpha and the Thunder Bay Alpha, a step apart from the rest, not looking at each other.

And Torvald, in a borrowed shirt and somebody's old work pants, with nothing on his feet.

He'd spent the night in the old root cellar under the kitchen.

Vidar stood at the head of the table.

"By the old law," he said, "what was done to the Queen is judged by the Queen."

He looked at me, and stepped back.

I was in my uniform.

My arm was stitched and wrapped, my left hand splinted, and the Queen's ring was on my right.

The mark on my neck was above my collar where everyone could see it, and I'd left it that way.

I walked out to the middle of the floor and stood in front of Torvald.

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