Severed Ties: Rise of the Silver Wolf novel · Chapter 1 of 48
Chapter 1: The Gold Wolf
Daphne's gold wolf wakes before the whole pack and Thea's never does; her mother hands her a severing paper already inked, and she cuts the tie with her own blood as the Hearth Stone lights silver.
At midnight, in front of two hundred wolves, my sister's gold wolf came out of her and the whole hall stood up.
My twin had dropped to her hands on the stone floor in her white ceremony dress.
Her back arched. Her bones cracked and slid.
Then an enormous wolf shook out her coat under the lights, and it was the colour of new honey.
"Alpha-grade," the old man read from the board. "Gold."
Nobody in our pack had seen gold in forty years.
The scouts from three elite packs shoved through the benches to get to her.
My mother grabbed my hand and squeezed it so hard my knuckles ached.
"That's your sister," she whispered. "Look at her, Thea. Aren't you proud?"
"I am," I said, and I was.
I had watched Daphne run the north ridge every morning for six years, and I had slept through every afternoon afterward.
That was just how we were. She ran and I got dizzy.
Mom put a thermos in my hand.
"Drink your tea before you go up. It'll settle you. Your wolf's only shy, that's all."
It was the same bitter brown tea she had given me every morning of my life.
I drank it, bitter and metal-tasting as always.
"Thea Corvane," the Elder called.
I walked to the middle of the floor and knelt.
I thought of everything I'd ever wanted from my wolf. Just to run once. Just to be seen.
I waited for the pull in my spine.
Nothing came.
The hall was loud with my sister's name, and under it I heard someone laugh.
"Nothing," the Elder said at last. "No wolf. No rank. No colour."
He said it gently, which was worse.
Mom was already beside me. She had her best cardigan on and a folded paper in her hand.
She had not brought a purse. She had brought a paper.
"Sweetheart, we talked about this," she said. "It's only a formality, so Daphne's record stays clean."
"What talk?"
"The Severing," she said, and smiled at me. "Strathmore won't take a girl whose sister is wolfless. It's only on paper. You'll live at Grandma's old croft, and we'll visit. I'll bring your tea."
My grandmother had been dead since I was a baby.
I looked at the page.
At the top it said HEARTH SEVERING in my mother's neat hand. Below it were my name and today's date.
The ink on every line was already dry.
She had written it days ago. She had written it before I'd had a chance to try.
I looked at my father.
Dad stood a step behind her with his hands in his pockets. He studied the floor.
"Dad?"
"Your mother knows best," he said.
Across the hall Daphne had shifted back, wrapped in a blanket, her cheeks pink. She was grinning at the scouts.
She hadn't looked at me once.
"The Elder will do the cutting," Mom said. "You don't have to do a thing, just kneel."
Eighteen years of morning tea. Eighteen years of naps.
A mother who had made time to write a paper, and no time to ask me how I felt.
I stood up.
"No," I said.
The scouts turned. Two hundred heads turned with them.
"Hand me the knife," I told the Elder.
"Thea, don't be dramatic," Mom said.
"If you're cutting me off, I'll do it myself."
The Elder hesitated. Then he took the little silver blade off the Hearth Stone and held it out.
My mother's face changed.
"Not you," she said. Her voice cracked. "Let the Elder do it. Thea, please, let the Elder do it."
I had never heard her ask me for anything that fast.
So I took the knife.
I walked to the Hearth Stone, the old flat rock at the center of the hall where every family in Pinecrest had once been bound, and I laid my left hand flat on it.
I cut across my palm.
Blood ran into the grooves of the stone.
"I, Thea Corvane, cut myself from this family," I said. "My blood, my hand, my choice."
The stone shook under me.
Then it lit.
Not red, the way the old stories said. Not gold, the colour of my sister's fur.
Silver.
White-silver light poured up through the cracks, over my wrist, up my arm, and every wolf in the hall went still.
On the far side of the room, my sister's blanket slid to the floor.
Daphne made a thin, strange sound.
Her golden eyes drained to brown, and she dropped to her knees.
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