Chapter 23: Who Kneels

One by one, the pack knelt.

I watched it from inside a body I did not yet know how to use.

The grey-bearded elder first, then the Beta, then the guards who had taken off their hats.

Then the rest followed down through the ring.

Wolves lowered their heads to the ground and people went to their knees in the pine needles.

Two hundred of them, and every one looked at me.

I did not know what to do with my face.

I did not have the right one for it.

Jonah walked out from the altar and put both hands in the fur of my neck.

"You're really big," he told me.

"Mom, you're so big."

I licked his ear, and he shrieked with laughter.

It was the first time I had heard him laugh like a six-year-old.

Behind us the sky went grey.

The moon slid behind the westernmost stone, and I felt the shift go out of me.

I was on the cold altar in my own skin.

Torin had his coat over me before I had finished shivering.

He was sitting up, with one arm around Hazel and the other held out to me.

His hands were warm.

"Ingrid."

"I'm fine."

"I know. I could tell."

He smiled.

It was the first time I had seen him smile without anything behind it.

The grey-bearded elder rose from his knee.

He cleared his throat and turned to the circle.

"By the oldest law," he said, "the strongest wolf in the pack leads it."

"That is no longer Torin Wolcott."

A murmur.

"Alpha," he said, turning to me.

"The pack awaits your word."

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