Chapter 5: The Ring

At nine the next morning, Bess drove me to the Alpha house in her husband's truck.

The house stood nine-tenths of a mile from the lake.

Halvard had measured it on a map and told me that was luck.

"If you feel a pull in your chest, stop walking," he'd said, and handed me a duffel bag and a thermos of coffee.

I felt nothing but the cold.

Bess gripped the wheel with both hands and her belly almost touching it.

"I'm going to kill her," she said, for the fourth time.

"You're five months pregnant."

"I'll kill her sitting down."

The yard was full.

Half the pack stood between the porch and the driveway in coats and boots, and every face turned as the truck pulled in.

I got out.

I saw Delphine at the top of the steps at once.

She had Ilse beside her, and Lucan a little behind, gray-faced in the same clothes as last night.

Delphine held up her right hand and turned it so the light caught it.

On her third finger was a thin band of old silver.

My grandmother's wedding ring.

The one I had set on the white tablecloth for the whole pack to see.

"Ilse gave it to me after you left," Delphine said. "She said the hearth should keep it."

I walked up the steps and stopped one below her.

"Take it off."

"It's a pack heirloom."

"It's an Osterberg heirloom. My grandmother wore it for fifty-one years. The pack has never owned it."

"Neve." Ilse's voice came low and patient. "Don't make a scene."

"I called the Frost Rite in front of sixty people last night. I think the scene's started."

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