Chapter 24: The Pack at the Fire

The next full moon rose over the fire ground, and a hundred and ten wolves came to watch.

Nobody had cut back the monkshood.

It stood around the Founders' Stone in a thick purple ring, higher than Rowena's knee, and it moved in the wind without a sound.

The moss had never grown back on the north face.

The Kerr crest was still there, a stag inside a ring.

Beneath it, deep and clean in the firelight, was the other name.

Rowena stood in front of both.

She wore no birthday dress. She wore her clinic boots and a plain green sweater, and her hair was loose.

Junie sat on the grass at her feet in a patched wool cloak she had sewn herself, eating a pie.

"Say something," Junie hissed. "They're staring."

"I'm getting to it."

"You've been getting to it for ten minutes."

Hester sat by the fire in a folding chair with a blanket on her knees and a mug in her hands.

It held ordinary tea. She had told Rowena so twice.

Rowena stepped up beside the stone.

"You asked me what to call ourselves," she said. "I've thought about it for nine days."

The pack went quiet.

"Ironwood is a Kerr name. It's also the pack I was raised in, and the pack of the girl who scrubbed your pots."

"So we stay Ironwood. And the Stone keeps both names."

"The crest stays. The moss doesn't come back."

"Anyone who passes this fire reads what happened here."

"Nobody in this pack ever says again that we found the valley empty."

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