Chapter 8: Off Pack Land

Dorian did not answer the six badges on the floor.

He looked at them, and then at Pippa's white fingers on his sleeve.

"Rosalind," he said. His voice was thick. "You'll leave pack land tonight."

"I thought I had."

"You're still inside the line, standing in my hall, accusing my allies."

He drew a breath. "Take the Beta and your grandmother and get out. If you're not over the boundary by dawn, I'll have you removed."

"By whom?" Perrin said.

Nobody laughed, but it came close.

Dorian turned on him. "You're stripped of the Beta's rank. As of now."

"I resign it," Perrin said.

He took the silver pin from his collar and set it on the table beside the rubbing.

"I served you eleven years, Dorian. I carried seven papers up those stairs because you ordered me to. I'd rather carry the Luna's coat."

He picked up the coat from the back of a chair, where Rosalind had left it, and held it open for her.

She slipped her arms into it.

Her chest hurt, and her legs shook, and she did not let either show.

"I'll go," she said. "Not because you ordered it. Because I'm done."

She looked around the hall.

Three hundred faces looked back, and some of them were wet.

"Anyone who wants to stay with the Alpha may stay," she said. "Nobody here owes me anything."

"Luna," said a woman by the door, and bowed her head.

A man beside her bowed.

Then a whole row of them, one after another, down the wall.

They did not look at Dorian.

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