Chapter 16: Banished

Two Stonemere warriors stepped in front of the gate.

They were boys I'd once pulled out of the lake.

Neither of them would look at me.

I didn't look at them either.

I looked past them, up the stairs, at the six strangers in good coats.

I pitched my voice to reach the top step.

"I'm Freja Pellam, Luna of Hollow Pine. I came under guest right, and your host accepted it. I ask the Council to hear me."

Dad's face went dark red.

"She has no standing. She was banished."

"I wasn't banished. I left."

The eldest of the Alphas, a white-bearded man from one of the northern packs, put a hand on the stair rail.

"Which is it, Alpha?"

"She clawed her sister's face open," Mom said gently. "We had no choice."

Tilly touched her cheek, as if there were a scar there.

There wasn't.

There never had been.

"Look at her face," I said. "Five years, and not a mark. She's twenty-three and she bruises if you look at her hard."

"Put her off the land."

The two boys took my arms.

Wylie moved, and Arlene grabbed the back of his flannel.

"Don't," she hissed. "That's what he wants."

Then Ansel walked through the gate past me.

He climbed the stone stairs two at a time and turned around on the top step, beside Dad, facing the whole yard.

"She didn't claw anybody," he said.

Dad turned his head slowly.

"Ansel."

"I was there." My brother's voice shook, and then it didn't.

"Freja opened Dillon's door and found Tilly in his bed."

The yard went still.

Dillon was standing by the Ridgeback cars.

He didn't move, and he didn't deny it.

"I stood behind her in the hall and told her Tilly would get bored of him. Freja didn't touch Tilly. She didn't say one word to her."

"She walked down to the pack stone and cut her own bonds. Nobody banished her. She left us."

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