Chapter 12: The Hearing

The wolf in the snow lowered his head, and the black fur ran backward over his body.

A man knelt there, naked and shaking, with his hands in the snow.

Wynne threw him her coat.

He pulled it around his hips and looked up at me.

"Is it true?" I said.

I held up the photograph with both hands.

My voice was level, and I was proud of it.

"Yes," Corbin said. "I gave you half my wolf. You were dying."

The yard was dead quiet.

I looked at the girl in the blue raincoat, and her shoulder, and the boy with blood on his mouth.

Something large and furious started to rise in me.

I pushed it down.

"Later," I said.

"Larissa."

"Later. I have a Hearing."

I handed the photograph back to my uncle.

He took it with a small, satisfied nod, and I walked past him into the lodge.

The Hearing met in the great hall at moonrise.

The long table was pushed to the walls, and the seven Alphas sat on chairs in a half circle.

Bernard spoke first.

He did not raise his voice.

He told them what the photograph showed, and what the old law said.

"A wolf who takes half of another is a leech," he said. "The giver is struck from his pack."

He let that sit.

"The leech is put down, unless the Alphas rule otherwise. My brother's girl has been breaking that law since she was nine."

"She did not take anything," Corbin said. "She was dead."

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