Chapter 15: The Night Raid

Ansel's POV

I had my pack in the yard in the time it took the bell to stop ringing.

Sixty wolves, in coats and in nightshirts, with Hester at the lodge door counting the cubs down into the cellar by name.

I put Danica behind the lodge porch and told her to stay there.

She said "All right," and I knew she wouldn't.

Nine trucks came up the north road with their lights off, and stopped under the arch.

The Greywater Beta stepped down from the first one with a Council writ in his fist.

Forty wolves came out of the trucks behind him, and half of them carried rope.

"Ansel Thorburn," he called. "I'm here by the Council's leave to bring in the thief, Danica Fontana. Hand her over and nobody bleeds."

"She isn't a thief or a rogue," I said. "She's neither until the Gathering says it."

"A writ says she's mine to take."

"That writ says summoned. Read it again."

His face went dark in the glow of the lodge lamps.

He had not read it again, because he did not need to.

He had come to take her anyway.

"Take her," he said to his men.

They shifted where they stood.

I heard forty sets of bones shift under skin at once, and then the road was full of wolves.

I went down on all fours and let mine come up.

It is a long, hard pull, and it has never frightened me, and I went into the first wave at a run.

For a while I knew only teeth and snow.

I put a grey wolf onto his side and another over a fence, and my pack was a roar around me, steady and loyal.

Then I heard Hester shout my name from the porch.

Three raiders had come round the lodge and were on the steps, between her and the cellar door.

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