Chapter 8: The Offering

The pack hall was full by noon, and the water barrel stood by the kitchen door with its lid off.

I hadn't been allowed to drink from anything since the night before.

Ellis walked me in, and my other brothers stood in a row along the wall with their notes inked on their hands.

Lester was already on the platform beside Dad, and he looked sad, which was somehow the worst part.

"We love our guest," he said. "We do. But we have a hundred and forty people to think of."

"The King has a hundred soldiers at our fence," he went on. "And a girl who can calm the red. A girl nobody knows."

"She can calm it because she's a witch," somebody said from the back.

"That's not what I said," Lester said gently. "I would never say that."

I didn't have to look to know whose idea the word had been.

"Glenn," he said. "You decide. The pack will follow you either way."

Dad stood at the center of the platform with his big hands flat on the table.

He looked ten years older than he had at my party.

"I don't want to hand a child to an army," he said.

"It's a parley, not a sacrifice," Lester said. "She'll go as a guest of the King. Her family can send word."

"She has no family," a woman near the front said.

Something in me cracked.

"I do," I said.

I stepped onto the floor before Ellis could grab my sleeve.

A hundred and forty people turned to look at me, and I did what I'd told myself I wouldn't do.

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