Chapter 5: Take It Back

I took my time answering, because the whole yard was listening.

Thirty rogues, a dozen riders, and one stunned Beta's daughter somewhere down the road, and nobody made a sound.

"No," I said.

Maddock blinked.

He stood there, stunned.

"Dilys, you don't understand what I'm offering."

"You're offering to take back three years."

"I'm offering you a seat at the high table. A name. The chance to be Luna."

"You offered me that once already," I said. "Then you took a breath in front of four hundred wolves and made it a joke."

"I was twenty-two."

"I was twenty-one, and I was on a cot for three weeks eating my own roots."

His face went red.

"My father told me what to do," he said, low. "You think I wanted it?"

"I think you did it."

The riders shuffled.

I was not crying, and I was not shaking, and I wanted every wolf in that yard to see it.

"I'm not coming home," I said. "Not to the hall, not to the Stone, not to you."

Maddock looked past me then, at the tall man in Bede's flannel shirt standing quietly at my shoulder.

His eyes narrowed, and the old charm fell off his face.

"Is that who it is? The Dacre boy?"

"His name is Torquil," I said.

"His name is murderer."

Maddock's voice cracked across the yard.

"He poisoned his own father's tea in the still room and let the pack carry the blame. Ask him, Dilys."

"Ask me what?" Torquil said mildly.

It was the first thing he had said, and every wolf in the yard heard how calm it was.

Maddock opened his mouth, and found nothing in it.

"We're going," he said at last, to nobody. "This isn't over."

He swung up, turned the horse, and led his riders down the road in the dark.

One of them, the heavy man, looked back at me and touched two fingers to his brow.

I stood on the porch until the sound had faded.

Then I went inside, past thirty exhausted wolves and one harmonica, and up the back stairs to the room above the clinic.

I did not look behind me.

I heard him come up anyway, slow and heavy, favoring his left side.

"Dilys," he said at my door.

I turned around.

My hands were shaking now, finally, and I made fists of them.

"He said I'd come home," I said. "I'd like to decide for myself where that is tonight."

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