Chapter 6: Right Hand

The Roan eat supper at one long table under the antlers, three hundred wolves on benches, with the Alpha at the head.

I sat at his right hand, as he had told them.

Nobody looked at me.

Everybody looked at me.

Dessie set a plate down in front of me with a pork chop the size of a boot sole.

"Eat," she said. "All of it."

Duncan sat with his hands flat on the board, not touching his own food.

He had come home that afternoon and spoken quietly in the hall:

"Study. After supper. Please."

I had said nothing.

Now he leaned toward me a few inches.

He spoke in an even, courteous voice, and it carried down both sides of the table as far as the salt.

"Miss Moretz."

"Mr. Trivett."

"You will eat everything on that plate," he said. "You will need your strength."

He did not blink.

"I mean to spend tonight finding out how you sound when you are not frightened, and I mean to take my time."

A fork dropped somewhere down the bench.

The Roan went on eating, with great attention to their plates.

I put a piece of pork in my mouth and chewed it very slowly.

"Is that a threat?" I said.

"It's a schedule."

Dessie, at the far end, made a noise into her napkin.

I cleaned my plate.

The study was a square room at the back of the lodge, with a fire and a leather chair.

The big oak desk had belonged to his father.

He shut the door and turned the key.

Then he stood with his back against it, in his coat, and did not come any closer.

"You left," I said.

"Yes."

"I woke up and your truck was gone. You were gone three days."

I kept my voice down.

"You put a coat on me at the Gathering, and then you were afraid to sit at the same table."

"Yes," he said.

"That isn't an answer," I said.

"No." He closed his eyes. "I know it's not. I don't have a good one."

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