Chapter 18: Faye's Terms

"No," I said.

Jarrett's hand slid off the table.

"I don't want the seat," I said. "I wanted to stop being the one who carries everything for you."

"Faye."

"If I take it, I'm still your Gamma, only with a bigger chair. You don't get to hand me your pack to pay what you owe me."

"Then tell me what I do owe."

I had thought about that answer for eight years.

"Tomorrow night," I said. "The Stone Hall. Both packs, and every elder. I'll tell you there."

The Stone Hall held four hundred people the next night, and more stood outside the open doors.

Wolves from Stillwater filled the benches, and Ironwood stood along the back wall in its flannel.

The northern line was holding.

The first Ironwood trucks had reached the Hendry ranch at dawn, and the rogues had gone back across the ridge with two wolves dead.

Nobody in the hall mentioned it.

Everyone knew who had been standing at the gate when it mattered.

Jarrett waited in the center of the circle with a bandage over one eye.

He had put on a plain gray shirt.

He wore no pin and no coat.

Muriel sat in the high seat with the other two elders, and she nodded at me once.

Darek stood behind my left shoulder, and he did not touch me.

I walked into the middle of the stones.

"I have three things to ask of Jarrett Brandis, in front of Stillwater," I said. "They're the price of what he did, and none of them is him."

A low sound moved around the benches.

"First," I said. "You will say it aloud, so every wolf here hears it. What you did to me on the night of the party."

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