Chapter 11: Dawn at the Ford

Ronan came to my door an hour before dawn.

This time he knocked, and he waited until I said, "It's open."

He stood on the threshold with his hands at his sides.

"If I pledge it, I'm afraid I'll be standing at your bedside in a year."

"Then you'll be standing there with a spoon," I said. "Because I'll be telling you to eat your soup."

"Hazel."

"I've had the bond humming in my arm for five days."

"I've cooked for a hundred wolves, crossed a river, and set a ladle down in front of an Alpha. I've never felt stronger."

"My mother laughed in every room too."

"Your mother never had me." I stood up. "She never had a kitchen of her own, either, and I'd bet my pans on it."

He almost smiled.

"I won't promise I'm not afraid," he said.

"I'm not asking you to be fearless. I'm asking if you'll do it anyway."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Yes," said Ronan.

It was not the easy yes of a man who had stopped being afraid.

It was the harder one, and I took his hand and held on.

We rode to the Silver River together before the light had fully come.

The Blood Moon pack came behind us, two hundred strong, in silence.

On the Silver Dawn bank forty wolves stood waiting in the mist.

Brendan sat his horse at the front with the signet ring on his hand.

Beside him rode a thin man in gray robes, and behind him, on foot with his head down, came my father.

I got down from my horse.

I walked into the river up to my ankles, and I stopped in the middle of the ford.

Nobody on either bank said anything.

"Hazel," said Brendan. "Come home. This has gone far enough."

"It has," I said. "Let's finish it."

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