Chapter 23: The Seat

I stood over the old Alpha in the ring with blood running down my ribs, and nobody made a sound.

I shifted back. Hester was already coming across the grass with a blanket.

The wolf on the ground shifted too.

He lay there, an old man with a white scar on his shoulder and his pale eyes shut.

"The challenge is answered," the elder said. His voice cracked in the middle. "The ring is Dara Standifer's."

Nobody cheered.

They knelt.

It began with the old man in the canvas jacket.

Then the clinic women knelt, then the lower farms, and knees went down across the whole knoll.

Maisy knelt with her hand over her mouth, crying and laughing at once.

Three hundred people were on the ground at my feet, and I did not know what to do with my hands.

I looked for Tobias.

He was still at the back, standing. He had not knelt, because he was a guest.

He smiled at me across the whole hill, and the bond warmed.

"Sign it," Hester said at my elbow.

The ledger lay on the board in front of the stone, with a pen beside it.

I turned to the first blank line and wrote my name in my father's ink.

Dara Standifer, Alpha of Ashfall, by blood.

My hand was quite steady. The mark on my shoulder burned the whole time.

"Judgment," the elder said. "The Alpha will give it."

I looked at the old man at my feet.

"Get up," I said.

He stood. He was naked and gray and sixty-eight, and every eye in the pack was on him.

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