Chapter 24: Midsummer

The stone in the middle of the lawn was warm from the sun again.

It was Midsummer, and the torches were lit, and three hundred wolves stood in the ring.

I stood at the head table in a grey dress with my hand through Caspian's arm.

I had a wolf now, and I had a wrist with nothing on it, and I was warm.

Across the lawn, a girl in a white dress walked up to the stone.

She was nineteen years old, the daughter of a Greywater beekeeper, and she had spent two years trying to shift.

She hadn't managed it yet.

She stood in front of the stone with her palms open, the way the law says a Claimed woman stands.

Her mother was in the front row with both hands pressed over her mouth.

The man in front of her was a visiting heir from a northern pack.

He was good-looking, smooth, and he had come with a ring and a written speech.

He put his hand on the stone.

"Beekeeper's daughter," he said, loud enough for the back rows.

Joss, sitting two chairs down in the Alpha's seat, had gone completely still.

"I reject you as my mate," the heir said. "My pack needs a Luna with a wolf. I won't pretend otherwise."

It was the same speech.

It was the same hand on the same stone.

Somebody gasped, and I knew where it came from, because I'd made that sound once myself.

The girl didn't move.

She stood with her palms open and her face white, and I watched her look for someone to look at.

She looked at the head table.

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