The Wolf Who Can't Shift Just Dropped One novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Guest-Right

Corbin sponsors Larissa for three days and sets the rules; Bernard's cast-out paper arrives with a deadline, and her hand on it turns Corbin's eyes gold.

Corbin Hayes set the wolf down on the floorboards.

It scrambled back and lay flat beside the other one.

"Take them outside," he told two men in Stonecrest fleeces. "Let them change back in the snow."

Then he turned to my uncle, who had not moved from my shoulder.

"Bernard," Corbin said. "You brought three men into my hall to put hands on your niece."

"They were upset, Corbin. She hit a man." Bernard patted my arm and took his hand away. "Larissa is Ashgrove's concern. Her pack will see to her."

"Her pack struck her from the roll ten minutes ago in front of everyone I invited."

"Then she's nobody's ward but mine."

"She's my guest," Corbin said.

The hallway had gone so quiet I could hear the snow on the windows.

"Guest-right, for the three days of the Muster," he said. "Under my roof, nobody touches her. If you want her, Bernard, you can try me."

My uncle smiled with his whole face, the way he did when I burned the biscuits.

"Of course," he said. "Take the room, sweetheart. We'll talk Saturday."

He walked away down the hall with Brock's friends dragging the man I'd dropped, and the line closed up behind him and started breathing again.

I found my hands shaking and put them in my pockets.

The paper was in the right one, folded small.

Corbin's office was on the second floor, with a stone fireplace and a wall of framed pack photographs.

Wynne came in after us with a tray of three mugs and put it down without asking.

"Cocoa," she said. "You punched a full wolf in my hallway. I would have paid money."

"Wynne," said Corbin.

"I'm being useful."

I sat on the edge of a leather chair and did not drink anything.

"You said fifteen years," I said. "I have never seen you before."

Corbin stood at the window with his back to the room, his gloved hand flat on the glass.

"You were here once," he said. "At the Muster, when you were nine. You wouldn't remember it."

I didn't.

I remembered my father's truck, and the cabin, and then a hospital bed and my uncle's face.

I did not remember a lodge.

"That isn't an answer."

"It's the one I'm giving you tonight." He turned around. "Three rules, and then you can sleep."

"I don't take rules from men who won't answer questions."

"You'll take these. They keep you alive." He held up one finger. "You stay inside the lodge until the Hearing. Two, nobody touches anybody. Not you, not me, not a wolf in the hallway. Three, I make no claim on you and you make none on me."

"I wasn't going to claim you."

"Good. On the fourth morning you leave at dawn, and I'll drive you home myself."

Wynne made a small sound into her mug.

"What Hearing?" I said.

Wynne put the mug down and answered me, because her brother was not going to.

"Pull out that paper, Larissa."

I did.

I read it properly for the first time, standing by the fire.

Below the line where I was meant to sign, there was a paragraph in smaller type.

A release left unsigned by moonrise on the third night would go before the seven Alphas.

They would decide whether the claimant was a wolf at all.

If the answer was no, the cabin and my father's land went to Ashgrove as abandoned.

"If I sign, I keep a bed in his house," I said.

"And he keeps the land," said Wynne. "Everything your dad built on it."

"If I don't sign, there's a vote."

"The vote's Saturday at moonrise," said Corbin. "Seven Alphas, one roll. If the roll has your scent in it, you're a wolf and the land is yours. If it doesn't, it's his."

"The roll can't read me."

"No," he said.

"Can you smell me?"

He looked at me a long time.

"No," he said. "I haven't smelled anything on you since you walked in."

"That's not a good sign."

"It isn't a bad one either. I can't explain it yet."

I took a breath through my nose, and the room smelled like pine, cocoa and the wool of his sweater, and nothing at all like him.

I thought that was strange, and then I stopped thinking it.

"I want my Hearing," I said. "I'm not signing his paper. I'll stand in front of seven Alphas and make them look at me."

"They'll want a scent."

"Then I'll find one."

I crossed the room and held the paper out to him, since it was his hearing to call.

He reached for it.

For one second my bare fingers touched the edge of his glove.

His eyes went gold.

It was a clean, bright gold.

Then he stepped back and put his hand behind him, and the green came back.

"That's rule two," he said, and his voice had gone rough.

"It was an accident."

"I know."

I looked at Wynne.

She had gone very white and her mug was shaking in her hands.

"He hasn't had gold eyes since he was twelve," she whispered.

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