His Loyalty Test Became My Pack's Funeral novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: Middle of the River
At noon I rowed out alone into the middle of the Blackwater.
Both shores were lined with people.
On the west bank stood what was left of Moonwatch, black with soot.
On the east bank, a little way off, stood a barge heaped with tarred barrels and twelve men with torches.
They had not lit them.
An hour earlier the young soldier had rowed across with Sabine's silver ring in his fist, and told them in the Alpha's voice that the Alpha's order was to wait.
They had obeyed.
Whoever carried the seal.
I shipped my oars and let the skiff drift, and waited.
On the far bank a small boat pushed off from the reeds.
Joss rowed it himself.
He wore a clean grey coat, with his golden-brown hair combed, and he rowed easily, with a smile already on his face.
He stopped ten feet from me and let the current close the gap.
"Willa," he said warmly. "You came."
"You asked."
"I didn't think you would." He smiled, and looked past me to the Iron Hollow bank. "Is he dead yet?"
"Who?"
"Draycott." He drew a small glass vial from his coat and held it up in the sun. "Wolfsbane in the thigh takes a night, sometimes two. This is the one thing in the world that stops it. I made it myself."
I looked at the vial.
It was cloudy and brown.
"What do you want for it?"
"Come home," Joss said.
He said it simply, and for one breath I heard the old Joss, the one who sat on my bed when I was sad and tucked the blanket under my feet.
I did not feel anything.
I waited for it, and nothing came.
"Come home," he said again. "Let me bring you back across the river. The pack is shaken, that's all. They'll forget. I'll have Tobin hanged for the fire, Sabine for the lie, and you and I will rule Dawn Watch the way we were meant to. Your mate lives. Everybody lives."
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