Chapter 22: Silver

I stopped at the centre of the dais, three paces from Rowena, and let the moon fall on me.

It came down like cold water.

I didn't fight it this time.

The first time, in the guardroom, my bones had broken in a rage.

Now I opened my arms and let them go.

It still hurt.

My back bowed and my jaw lengthened, and my spine rolled out into a long pale line.

My hands hit the stone as paws.

The grey dress fell away, and my skin sprouted silver, thick and soft and gleaming.

My belly swung heavy between my forelegs, and the child inside me kicked once, hard.

I lifted my head.

The whole of the Moonfield had gone as quiet as a held breath.

I was taller at the shoulder than the Alpha King.

I could smell every wolf on the slope, two thousand of them.

Under them lay the cold green smell of grass and the red smoke of the fires.

And I could smell Lena.

She was all over the silver pelt on Rowena's shoulder, lavender and sunlight and the plain warm scent of a girl who had loved me.

Down the left side of my own body ran the white blaze.

It lay exactly where hers had.

"Oh gods," someone said on the dais.

It was Maud.

She had her hands over her mouth.

On my left, there was a rush of air and a heavy impact.

Dane had shifted at the foot of the stair.

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