Chapter 24: The Autumn

We came down into Ember Ridge on the first day of the autumn gathering.

The maples along the lane had turned, and the hall green was hung with lanterns and gold paper leaves.

I rode the grey mare.

Lucan rode beside me on a black horse that did not like the mare at all.

The pack lined the road to watch us.

Nobody whispered.

They stood with their hats in their hands, and one old woman bowed from the waist as I passed.

I knew why they looked.

I had left in a grey coat and a silk scarf.

I came back in a green wool jacket with the collar open.

At the side of my neck, plain in the light, were two marks.

The small silver crescent behind my ear.

And below it, healed to a clean pale scar, the shape of Lucan's bite.

Hattie met us on the hall steps in her green parka with a clipboard under one arm and a coffee in each hand.

She looked rested for the first time in years.

"You're late," she said, and gave me the coffee and hugged me with the other arm.

"Three minutes."

"I counted every one of them. How's the neck?"

"Quiet," I said.

"Good. I've got news."

She pushed her glasses up her nose.

"The grain elder's Alpha for the year. He's terrible at it and he knows it, so he asks me everything."

She ticked it off on her fingers.

"The books go on the hall wall every first of the month. Four hundred people read them with their breakfast. Nobody has stolen a dime since March."

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