Chapter 21: Earn It

Three days after the bridge, Iron Moon held its first meeting in the yard behind the Claiming Hall.

I stood on the steps with my arm in a sling and four hundred wolves in front of me.

Joran stood at the bottom, a long way off, with the white-bearded wolf and the council.

He had a bandage under his shirt and a limp he refused to mention.

The pack looked at me.

"They want to apologize," Fenn muttered at my elbow. "They've been practicing."

"I know."

"Do you want me to make them stop?"

"No."

A woman stepped out of the front row with her hands folded.

I knew her.

She was the one who had said, in the hall, *An orphan Luna? The Moon Goddess has a sense of humor.*

"Ilse Penhallow," she said. "I laughed at you. I said you'd never be Luna. I said it where you could hear."

"You did."

"I was wrong, and I'm ashamed."

"Thank you."

I did not say it was all right.

It was not.

She nodded and stepped back.

A man came forward, and then two more.

A girl who had shared my table once and stopped when it became uncomfortable.

A boy who had thrown a rotten apple at my window when I was thirteen.

They each said their piece, and I let them finish.

None of them asked me to take the seat.

I noticed that, and I was glad.

When the last one had spoken, I looked down the steps at Joran.

"You've said nothing," I said.

"I'm not here to speak."

"What are you here for?"

"To carry whatever you need carried."

The wolves laughed softly, and he flushed.

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