Chapter 23: The North Road

Catriona's POV

By morning, the snow lay a foot deep over the ridge, and it was still coming down.

I stood at the north window of Alexander's bedroom with my arm in its splint.

The new mark on my shoulder ached warmly under my shirt.

Behind me he slept on his stomach with one arm flung across my side of the bed.

I had not slept so well in twenty years.

I dressed quietly and went down to find Eliza and my younger daughter already at the kitchen table, eating cereal.

They had come north with the Cedar Fork trucks at dawn.

"Dora brought bolt cutters," my younger daughter said. "She says there's a chain."

"There is a chain."

"On the north road. At the stones." Her flat voice did not change. "Eliza says Dad had it put up the year you married."

"He did."

"So let's cut it."

We drove down in two trucks through the falling snow, with Alexander at the wheel of mine.

A line of Ash Mountain wolves followed on foot behind us.

The border stones stood where they always had, three grey slabs half buried in white, with the north road running between them.

Across the road hung a heavy chain, with a sign wired to it in Braden's block capitals.

CLOSED BY ORDER OF THE ALPHA.

Underneath, in smaller letters, someone had added: FOR THE LUNA'S SAFETY.

I had driven up to this chain a dozen times in twenty years.

Each time, a warden had come out of the little hut and told me kindly that the road was not safe.

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