Chapter 24: The Faceoff

"Yes," Rhys said from the bed, before I could open my mouth. "We're going to live here."

Emil considered it with great seriousness.

"Does Hattie live here too?"

"She'll have the cottage by the garden," I said. "With a real oven."

"Can the pony come?"

"There is no pony."

"Okay," said Emil, and climbed onto the foot of the bed with the cookie tin, and ate three cookies between us in the dark.

Three weeks later, on a Saturday in November, I stood in the tunnel behind the Northmen's bench with a ball cap in my hand.

I had decided against it at the last minute.

I put the cap in my pocket.

"Nervous?" said Bram.

"My son is about to walk onto an ice sheet in front of eighteen thousand people."

"He's got the Alpha's genes. He's going to love it."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

Bram grinned and bumped my shoulder.

The whole pack had taken to Emil.

The old Alpha had given him a wooden toy wolf he carved himself, and the elder with the braid had sent a card with a stern drawing of a puck.

Hattie had her own table at every home game now, with a sign that read Cookies, Free, Compliments Required.

Pia was gone.

The Hall stripped her of every right in the pack, and on the third morning she left Minnesota.

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