Chapter 7: Guest Ground

The Ashfang cook put four fried eggs on my plate and dared me to say that wasn't enough.

"It's enough," I said.

"It isn't. You're a new wolf. New wolves eat all day." She pointed her spatula at my toast. "That's two more slices, and I'm counting."

It was seven in the morning, and I was sitting in a warm kitchen in a borrowed flannel shirt, being fed by a stranger.

Ronan's house stood at the top of a long meadow, and it was low and wide and full of boots.

My grandmother sat at the end of the table with a mug in both hands, watching everyone with suspicion and drinking their coffee.

"Well?" Hester said, when the cook went out. "They feed you. They don't hover. That's more than I expected from a Hartley."

"Gram."

"I'm only saying I like the eggs."

"You like the eggs," I said.

She didn't smile, but the corner of her mouth moved.

Across the table, an old man in a cardigan was reading the paper with great concentration.

He had been Ashfang's Beta for forty years, and he'd said four sentences to me since I arrived.

The last one was, "Your wolf is going to be loud for a week. Don't apologize to anyone."

That was how I got through the first day: with eggs, and a guest room that smelled of cedar, and a pack that left me alone and left the pantry open.

At midnight my wolf woke me, restless, pacing under my skin.

I stood at the edge of the meadow in the flannel shirt and my socks.

"You can shift if you want to," said Ronan's voice from the porch. "The meadow's yours."

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