Chapter 8: The Hearing at the Gate

Enid Sayre arrived at Iron Hollow's gate at noon on the third day.

She came in a black sedan, with four Council elders in the cars behind her and thirty Blood Moon wolves on foot.

Delphine walked at her mother's elbow in a gray coat, her eyes on the ground.

Garrick walked at the back among the Blood Moon men, with two enforcers on either side of him.

Nobody had put a hand on him.

They didn't need to.

Sixty Iron Hollow wolves stood across the sawmill yard in a line.

Dorian stood in front of them with his arms crossed.

I stood at his left.

Odette stood at my right, and she had brought the wooden spoon.

Enid planted her cane on the gravel.

"Alpha Ketch," she said. "By Blood Moon law, a ward who flees to another pack is absent without leave."

"The Council may strike her at once."

"The law says that?" Dorian said.

"It does."

"Then why wait three days to come and tell me?"

A few of his wolves laughed.

Enid did not smile.

"The girl is unwell," she said. "She was raised soft. She doesn't understand what she is doing."

"I am here as an elder to take her home."

"I'm standing right here," I said.

Every head turned.

I had never spoken at a Council hearing in my life.

My voice came out steady, which surprised me.

"I'm twenty years old, Elder Sayre, and I know exactly what I'm doing."

"I'm choosing my own guardian, which your law lets me do."

"You are choosing a stranger."

"I'm choosing the only Alpha who offered."

"The only Alpha who offered did so for our river pass," Enid said.

"You are a prize, child. He is using you."

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