Chapter 4: The Silver Bar

Casimir's POV

At ten minutes to noon, I took the silver bar off my collar.

I set it on the clerk's desk in the Lodge.

It had been pinned there for nine years.

The clerk was a small grey woman who had kept the pack's book since before I was Beta.

She looked at the bar and then at me.

"He wants a signature," she said.

"He can have a signature," I said, and signed.

The hall behind me was full of wolves who had come to the Sunday meal.

Nobody ate.

I felt two hundred sets of eyes on my back and a few that didn't dare to land.

A young wolf I had taught to track near the north shore stood up from the long table.

He didn't say anything, and he didn't have to.

He put his fist against his chest, and then a woman beside him did, and then an old man at the end.

It was the old sign of respect for a wolf leaving a post with his head up.

I nodded to them and kept walking.

The door of the Alpha's study stood shut at the end of the hall, with a line of lamplight under it.

Leighton was in there, and he did not come out.

I did not knock.

Out in the lot, the wind off the lake smelled of snow.

I drove down the ridge with the windows open, and I let myself think about April.

The county office, a Tuesday, the smell of toner and wet coats.

Leighton had stood at the counter in his charcoal coat.

Sigrid had stood beside him in her work jacket, with grease still on her knuckles.

He'd said the house was a gift, so she would have somewhere of her own.

He'd said she should wait until after the winter to be named.

I stood at the end of the counter, as the witness.

Sigrid had looked down the whole length of it at me and said, "Hold the pen, Casimir, mine's dried up."

I signed with her pen.

I knew a stall when I saw one.

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