Chapter 15: On the Record

The harbor hall was a long room of dark wood with a horseshoe table in the middle.

Seven Alphas sat around it, grey-haired and sunburned, in fleece and flannel.

Winifred sat on the left side, in her cream cardigan, with Jared behind her chair looking at his hands.

I sat on a bench at the back, between Bree and a Tidewater guard.

Nobody looked at me, and everyone knew I was there.

The oldest Alpha tapped the table.

"Alpha Crane has asked to speak before the coast," he said. "Go on, son."

Dashiell stood up in a plain dark suit with no papers in his hands.

"Four months ago," he said, "the Alpha of Howling Bay sent me a gift pact."

The room shifted.

Gift pacts were old, and no one said the words aloud anymore.

"It named a woman of her pack as the gift," Dashiell said. "It named two docks as the price."

He let that sit.

"It said any child of the union would belong to Howling Bay."

Winifred's face did not move.

"I wrote declined across it and sent it back. I have never signed it, and I never will."

"Alpha Crane," Winifred said, in her gentle voice. "That was a private kindness between packs. I'm sure it was misunderstood."

"It was understood perfectly."

"And yet the pack's daughter lives under your roof, dear boy."

"She works in my building," he said, "and by my word she answers to no one."

There was a mutter along the horseshoe.

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