Chapter 17: Renounce

The leash was a length of braided red cord with a brass clip, the kind used on a dog that bites.

Crane held it up.

"There she is," he said, warmly, across the lane. "There's my girl."

I walked out through the gate before anyone could stop me.

Tobias started after me, and I raised one hand without turning, and I heard his boots stop.

Stonebrook had come down to the wall in the dawn, two hundred wolves in their nightclothes and coats.

Redcliff's twenty stood behind Crane with their eyes on the gravel.

Among them was the tall young warrior from the south border.

"Thea," Crane said. "Sweetheart. You've been very naughty."

"Dietrich."

"It's Alpha Crane. We'll talk about manners later. Bring the child out and we'll go home."

"No."

He laughed, as if I had told a joke.

"You don't get to say no, dear. You're a Redcliff wolf. You can't have a will of your own until your Alpha gives you one."

"Then I'll give it back."

He stopped laughing.

I turned so that both packs could see my face, and I spoke the words the way my grandmother taught me.

"I, Thea Overholt, born in Redcliff, leave Redcliff Pack. I put down its name and its law."

A hiss ran along the Stonebrook wall.

Crane's smile went flat.

"I leave Dietrich Crane as my Alpha," I said. "I owe him no oath and no obedience, and I will not answer to his hand or his voice."

"Stop that," he said.

"I leave Redcliff, and I will not carry its smoke."

"You'll sicken," he said. "You'll be dead in a week. You're bluffing."

"I know what it costs."

I looked past him, at the twenty wolves in the red-and-gray coats.

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