Chapter 22: What Odette Thought

It wasn't words she was thinking.

It was a stream of thought, flat and fast, and two hundred wolves heard every word.

*She'll go to the gate. She'll find the gate guard. Say the Brask wolf was a stalker. Say it twice.*

A man in the third row flinched.

It was a Harlan guard, and he had gone grey.

*Imi, Imi, Imi, you were always going to be Alpha. Every teacher said so. Every aunt.*

*Even when your wolf didn't come, they said it'll come, give her time.*

Odette stood very straight in the torchlight.

Her mouth was shut, and her eyes were open as wide as they would go.

*Mom asked her did we meet. I thought I'd laugh. I felt like I'd won something. I wanted to be sick.*

My mother cried out.

"Stop it," Odette said aloud, shrill. "Stop, this isn't mine, they're doing something to me."

The link didn't stop.

*I drafted the notice. Dad signed it at breakfast without reading. One child. I wrote it myself in pencil first.*

My father swayed.

*I cut her out of every photograph in the house.*

*I thought if I found her in one more, I'd have to put her back.*

"Odette," my mother whispered.

*I took the dust. I wanted the stone.*

*If it works once, it'll work again. I'll wish her out of Torin's head too. I'll wish him mine.*

A growl went through the Brask side of the ring.

Torin did not move, and the growl came from forty throats.

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